Nocturne Table of Contents and Personal Masterlist
My Old Attempt at a ThematSic Analysis
General Concepts of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
Character Analyses of . . .
Hikawa
Yuko Takao
Isamu Nitta
Chiaki Tachibana
Demi-Fiend
Christian Kabbalah References:
The Qliphoth References (From Debunking Series)
Personal Theories and Arguments:
The Manikins represented Fascism in its most pathetic form
My Opinion Piece on the Musubi Route
Why Hijiri is probably either Aleph or Mormon Jesus Christ
What TDE Raidou Route Means and Why it is my favorite
The Axiom / Great Will is probably some form of Brahman
Table of Contents for Debunking the Tragic Asshole
- Debunking the “Tragic Asshole”: Eirikrjs Lied about the Kabbalah References in SMT Nocturne
- Debunking the “Tragic Asshole”: Debunking Eirikrjs “Maniacs Retcon Woes” without any snarky comments
- Debunking the “Tragic Asshole”: Why JJCAT Only Proves Eirikrjs is Looking for Racism when there is None
Please Note: I have updated what I think the symbolism for Raidou the 14th might mean and the Daath / Da’at section contains spoilers for both PS2 Raidou games.
This post is debunking Part 2 of Eirikrjs “Maniacs Retcon Woes” which it titled “Skeletons and their Not-Menorahs”
When researching this, I wasn’t sure how much info was too much and how much would seem too brief in my explanation debunking Eirikrjs. So, I cut them into two parts for this specific rebuttal.
If you want to just read a brief explanation for why Eirikrjs is wrong, please use the CTRL + F keys to move to “TLDR Debunking” below. Also, Major Spoilers for Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne in both debunking explanations.
If you want to read a thorough explanation or have objections to the tldr section, then please enjoy my explanation for why I’m writing this and then move to the full debunking afterwards:
In the process of writing this, I’ve unfortunately suffered a complete and total collapse of my keyboard’s functionality and now require a new laptop to use. I’m currently typing with an external keyboard and have had to use a third-party program to manually shut down the question-mark key on my keyboard to prevent it from going haywire by infinitely repeating itself any time I click certain other mouse keys. In the mean time, I’ve used the number seven as a sort of stand-in for the question-mark and then replaced it with Word’s auto-replace feature. If I accidentally leave that in, then I hope you don’t mind too much and my sincerest apologies for the confusion. Over the past few days, I had been eager to finish this up quickly, but with the current predicament I wasn’t sure if I should and debated putting it on hold until I acquired my new laptop. But it hasn’t completely broken down yet and the issue is somewhat manageable at the moment. So, barring my current laptop completely falling apart, I’ll try as best as I can to continue writing these blog posts that shed light on Eirikrjs ignorance and lies.
Some might ask “Why do this?” and why not just allow Eirikrjs to continue corresponding only to his echo-chamber of angelic darlings who uncritically agree with everything he says? Why not just ignore him? Well, unfortunately, the assumption that ignoring bad faith arguments makes them go away is an unproven one and – judging from my own experience and observances – it seems contrary to actually putting a stop to idiotic beliefs, arguments, and ideas. When you ignore stupid ideas, they become louder and go on unchallenged to eventually negatively impact things that you care about. So, I do think it is important to challenge the very disgusting lies that Eirikrjs spews that Atlus Japan is anti-Semitic. Moreover, judging from extensively reading his question and answers session, I’ve come to the conclusion that after three years of keeping silent on Eirikrjs more . . . unpalatable views . . . that he is legitimately a racist against Japanese people. The way he talks about Japanese people is frankly disturbing; he treats their “reasoning” as if it is always connected to some hyper-nationalist and racist viewpoint. Even if a Japanese person is showing appreciation for Western culture, he repeatedly interprets it in the most negative way possible and accuses them of hyper-nationalism and general stupidity as if they’re incapable of thinking otherwise. Even more disturbing is that this racist viewpoint of his is being accepted as unquestionable fact by both his tumblr followers and some people on the reddit forums in general who call his racist views “nuanced” when they’re not. It’s to the point that I’m genuinely worried what extent this man’s views will be inspiration for any future White Nationalist movement, if left unchallenged. That may sound facetious, but his views don’t stick to criticisms of the games themselves; they become this ridiculous attack on Japanese people’s intelligence, this xenophobic response of accusing them of xenophobia as a pretext without evidence, and his lack of actual response to criticisms – while claiming to accept criticisms and ask for other people’s thoughts – seems to be to defend his racist views that he tries to portray as “social justice” by making baseless accusations against Japanese people and Atlus Japan. As a result, I think the only fair thing to do is debunk his credibility, so that he won’t hold so much sway. I decided to leave this alone because I had been so annoyed with his 2017 blog post on Hijiri that I shamefully acted inappropriately by disparaging SMT2 and calling his blog post stupid. I still don’t know what he’s talking about regarding his identity crisis blog post and he’s never clarified when I asked. Nevertheless, he’s continued to make “additions” that only seem to show his own ignorance and it seems to me that he lied to fans about even playing SMT Nocturne.
People tell me that he’s “falling out of love with the series” and to just let him continue because it’ll end shortly. I’m not sure if any of you who mention this have realized . . . but he’s been “falling out of love” with the series for three whole years now and continues to make baseless complaints about it that only seem to show that he’s never actually played any of the games that he’s complaining about. So . . . I think people need to rethink his expertise. I’ll delve into that aspect more in the next Debunking post. For this one, I’ll stick to his false aspersions on SMT Nocturne’s usage of Kabbalah Mythology.
I feel it is necessary to mention one point of difference from where Eirikrjs and I view Kabbalah. Eirikrjs and I are both biased, but we come from diametrically opposed views of bias. I don’t know his religious views, but judging from his blog when he mentions Kabbalah, he seems to value Kabbalah as a real and legitimate practice that he sees as complex and intense. Perhaps he sees it as a real connection to spiritual beliefs that he may have. By contrast, I see all religious stories as pure mythology unless they have accredited archaeological backing or a good historical basis in the context of ancient societies cultural practices to support them. I believe that the “supra-rational” that Kabbalah and any other religious belief purports is thoroughgoing anti-intellectualism and sophistry unless it can be defended with demonstrable scientific evidence that can be replicated in multiple scientific studies. I think it is a positive trend when religious myths like the existence of Yahweh are put into video games. because that is where I believe that they belong. Religion is mythology. That is not to say that we shouldn’t have ritualistic practices, read the books, or identify as communities. That is all part of our identities and culture; they can still be meaningful traditions that we feel deeply connected to, even if they are based on nothing more than ancient people’s imaginations. All that is to say that Kabbalah is mythology and needs to be treated as mythology. They are human stories that we feel connected to, so we should craft new interpretations or contentions to them to create new forms of meaning and understanding through our modern art and for me personally, video games are the highest form of modern art. That is my perspective on religion.
Also, I want to be clear that I respect everyone’s human rights and I will treat them equally as human beings, but I don’t value religious beliefs equally. I believe some are more damaging than others. I think the Dharmic faiths as a whole and Judaism are mostly superior to other religious faiths, because they mostly accept atheism as a credible point of view and don’t encourage violence or discrimination against atheists. They all have their own unique failings, but on the whole, I think Judaism and Dharmic faiths cause less problems and have worked to lessen the issues that arise in their religious beliefs like misogyny. Casteism (in the case of Hinduism in particular), or whatever else.
TLDR Debunking
It wasn’t the Jewish Kabbalah’s Tree of Life of 11 Holy Sephirot. It was Christian Kabbalah’s 11 Unholy Qliphoth from the Tree of Death. That’s why six of the eleven Fiends are references to Christianity’s End of Times. The Qliphoth is sometimes understood to be “World of Chaos” in Christian Kabbalah and each Fiend’s background (or in Dante’s case, his actions) fit with the warnings of each of the impure Qliphoth. In some of Kabbalah mythology’s teachings, people end their journey at whatever point on the Kabbalah itself and not on the specific point of Kether because it is suppose to be a deeply personal experience. You go where the journey for wisdom reveals itself to you and it is not a set path; which is why the Demifiend can fight them in different orders. It’s you crafting your own journey. Eirikrjs seems to ignore or not know about the 32 Paths of Wisdom since he only cites the 22 Paths of the Tree of Life which doesn’t work here because it is the Tree of Death. Finally, even if you use the “set path” interpretations of Kabbalah, it surprisingly still doesn’t fail because it is the reverse of the Tree of Life’s pathways. In some Kabbalah teachings, Kether is both the beginning of the journey and the end of the journey, likewise the Demifiend begins with Malkuth as his first Candelabra and finalizes the ritual by giving away Malkuth on the final pillar before the final Kalpa. This further discredits Eirikjr’s JJCAT nonsense, because it is demonic Christian symbolism mixed with Dharmic symbolism and not Jewish per se. Also, courtesy of Larrue, I added developer documents from Atlus Japan pertaining to SMT Nocturne’s Kalpas and the Fiends at the very bottom.
Full Debunking:
Almost everything he said was based on faulty assumptions and it’s mindboggling that he didn’t realize it when he put the evidence together himself. This is actually even more confusing for me because Atlus Japan didn’t stray further from the most basic definitions for each, so I don’t understand how he missed this. This is what Eirikrjs himself beautifully put together:
Now here is what he said and I’ll explain why he’s mistaken in my response to the statements in the blog image (please click the image below to read it fully):
There are two different Trees in the mythology of Kabbalah, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death. The Fiends in Shin Megami Tensei games generally represent death. In some interpretations, the Tree of Death – that is, the Qliphoth – is understood to mean the World of Chaos. When given a Kabbalah metaphor with Fiends who unequivocally represent death, is it a more fair assumption to view SMT Nocturne’s usage of Kabbalah as the Tree of Life or the Tree of Death?
Long story short, this isn’t the Eleven Emanations of the Sephirot representing Ein Soph (YHVH before he self-manifested). It’s the Qliphoth, the Tree of Death and World of Chaos. Moreover, Eirikrjs either isn’t aware of or discounts the 32 Paths to Wisdom when examining the advancement. Although, arguably neither the 22 Paths of the Tree of Life nor the 32 Paths of Wisdom matter for a specific reason . . .
His assumption on Kether being the goal seems to have been his own misunderstanding. Now, to be clear, Kether is the goal in some Hasidic interpretations of Kabbalah, but it is surprisingly a fairly new conceptualization compared to the other Kabbalah related material. Moreover, the Chassidist (Hasidic interpretation), Christian Kabbalah, and all other interpretations begin with Kether in the Tree of Life. The journey of wisdom is suppose to be deeply personal, so the purpose is to find where your search for meaning and wisdom takes you so that you are closer to the “supra-rational” of the Abrahamic God’s eminence. You can end-up concluding on different parts of the Tree because it is just suppose to be your own journey of wisdom. Demifiend could have ended-up anywhere on the “board” as Eirikrjs calls it and it wouldn’t have mattered since it is just depicting our own personal journeys as the Demifiend by individually finding and defeating the different Fiends.
Judging from what I researched, it seems people make “new meanings” from their own personal Kabbalah journey all the time and conclude wherever they feel the journey is suppose to take them on the Tree in the more esoteric and older interpretations in search of meaning and wisdom. The idea of a preset path is flawed and seems to only be true for Hasidic and Christian interpretations of Kabbalah. Yet, even from these interpretations, we can conclude that Atlus did it correctly. All this to say, on the most basic level of Kabbalah mythology, so long as Demifiend began and ended with the same Qliphoth, then Atlus did it correctly. Demifiend began with Malkuth and the last Candelabra\Menorah that he gave away for the ritual was Malkuth. It’s a reversal of the Tree of Life beginning and ending with Kether. So, how was this incorrect? Even more perplexing, how could Eirikrjs have missed the very obvious symbolism to the Qliphoth, the Tree of Death when the Fiends themselves quite clearly symbolize death?
It only gets worse from there. When completing the True Demon Ending, it is not a stretch by any means to interpret the Demifiend as the SMT equivalent of an Anti-Christ figure. Well, that idea was only further reinforced when researching the placement of each of the Fiends and please remember that six out of the eleven are specifically from Christian mythology of the End Times. It seems Atlus Japan did indeed take great pains to avoid any notion of anti-Semitism, because the placement of the Fiends on the Qliphoth follow Christian Kabbalah’s teachings. This makes perfect sense when you recognize the Fiends aren’t derivatives of any Jewish mysticism, but purely Christian in their theological underpinnings. It further explains Lucifer’s placement as he would obviously be the one ruling the Tree of Death based on Christian mythology and it neatly explains why the Demifiend is an Anti-Christ metaphor upon completing the True Demon Ending. It is possible that Atlus Japan may not have even used any Jewish mysticism as its main source material, but rather utilized the freely available and far less obscure Christian Kabbalah and only referenced Jewish Kabbalah when the Christian Kabbalah proved unusable. For example, the Christian Kabbalah version for Nezach only references one of the “fruits of the Holy Spirit” as a metaphor for living a Christian life and doesn’t seem to have any Qliphoth version mentioned from what I checked, so Atlus probably utilized Jewish Kabbalah in this instance and had the representative be Daisoujou, who is Buddhist in origin.
Most of these seem to be direct references to Christian Kabbalah’s Tree of Death and the Christian variants of the Qliphoth. Unless otherwise stated, most of these should be understood as Atlus Japan referencing Christian Kabbalah. I’ll begin with Kether and end with Malkuth:
Kether: In the Jewish Kabbalah, Kether represents what is entirely incomprehensible to humanity. Essentially, it is seen as beyond the human mind to even understand. In the oldest Jewish Kabbalah text, the Zohar, it is referred to as “the most hidden of all hidden things” and represents “Nothing” because it has no content within itself. Kether is understood to be invisible and “Colorless” to humanity. The Sephirot version is suppose to mean the Abrahamic God’s absolute compassion for humanity, but Atlus Japan switched this with depicting the fourth horseman of the Christian End Times. Pale Rider fits with the Colorless meaning of the Sephirot, but the most intriguing aspect is that Atlus Japan flipped the meaning of what is incomprehensible and Nothingness with Pale Rider symbolizing Death. Death can also be seen as incomprehensible for the human mind to understand which is why we have so many fantastical beliefs about afterlives and it can also symbolize Nothingness. It’s a clever mockery of the concept by using the End of Times, which the Abrahamic God brings upon humanity.
Interestingly enough, one of its Qliphoth variations, seems to give the “revelation” of those cursed by God. Kether’s Qliphoth version of Cathariel symbolizes the “Fearful Light of God” and “The Broken” referring to angels who have fallen from failing to usurp God by using the power of Aleph. After the fall, they become “the Polluted of God” for opposing the Abrahamic God. Within the Fourth Kalpa, Demifiend learns of Hijiri being cursed for eternity with atonement for his unforgivable sin. Later in the True Demon route, when the Demifiend kills Kagutsuchi, Kagutsuchi and Lucifer both tell him that he’ll bear the curse of atonement as well. Since the Qliphoth version of Kether symbolizes the story about angels who were cursed forever for using the power of Aleph to usurp the Abrahamic God, this seems to offer more evidence that Hijiri is indeed the reincarnation of Aleph and that his curse was for killing the Abrahamic God in Shin Megami Tensei 2.
Binah: In Western esotericism, and not exclusively to Christian Kabbalah, Binah represents channeling our boundless creative power and providing positive structures and shapes via following the Divine will of the Abrahamic God. The Qliphoth variant of Binah, Satoriel, signifies death of the creative energy in favor of a lifeless eternal structure. Atlus Japan is cleverly providing a sarcastic rebuttal through Red Rider because following the Abrahamic God’s structure leads to the End of Times whereby war will ravage and destroy the world.
Chokmah: This one represents overflowing vitality of God, while its Qliphoth counterpart of Ghogiel represents going forth in a “Place Empty of God” which is represented by the Black Rider. Additionally, Chokmah is suppose to be the First Seeds of Creation and the Black Rider in the Christian End of Times symbolizes a Food Merchant who brings Famine. Thus, it can be interpreted to mean a double-rebuttal.
Da’at or Daath: Da’at has several different meanings for its Qliphoth variant due to being a special case as the Sephirot\Qliphoth that Kabbalah mythology enthusiasts accept or reject. It doesn’t seem to have a Qliphoth name from what I was able to look into, but it does have Qliphoth symbolism and Atlus Japan seems to have used them separately for the Demifiend and Dante (I can’t judge the Raidou version as I’ve never played it it represents Raidou being manipulated and deceived by Lucifer into ending his own timeline). For the Demifiend, it symbolizes the obstacle (Dante) preventing him from continuing his quest for knowledge and power by blocking his path through the next doorway as an allegory. For Dante, it represents losing the actual intent of the journey and being trapped in a web of secret information. Dante comments on his contempt for the Candelabra\Menorah before handing it to Demifiend, perhaps noting a contempt towards the knowledge itself.
The theme of losing the actual intent of the journey is doubly true of Raidou who explicitly fails at the mission and lost perspective upon realizing Nocturne’s world was his and Gouto’s future timeline. Raidou the 14th attempts to stick close to Demi-fiend by being hired for his services and what was intended to learn more about the future to prevent it ends-up becoming the very act that dooms his timeline. Raidou the 14th and Gouto wonder if the Demi-fiend will help them; yet, time has ended in the TDE ending itself and Raidou the 14th and Gouto are attempting to do the reverse of Raidou the 40th. It is implied both within the context of their own story arcs paralleling Raidou the 40th and within the context of Nocturne’s themes about friendship that Raidou is killed by the Demi-fiend himself. In this context, it would be the Raidou the 14th who made the choices aligning with Chaos in Raidou 2 and not Neutral or Law Raidou.
Interestingly, Kether and Da’at are often interchangeable depending upon the specific Tree of Life or Tree of Death format used. Since Malkuth is in Kether and Kether in Malkuth, it thereby stands that Malkuth is in Da’at and vice versa. This seems to symbolize that Demifiend is independently acquiring knowledge and surpassing death when he chooses to progress through the Kalpas and defeat the Fiends. All of which is self-explanatory, so how did Eirikrjs miss something so obvious?
Furthermore, it may symbolize Raidou the 14th of the Chaos route succumbing to his death.
Hesed or Chesad: In its Sephirot form, it is alternatively known for Mercy or Lovingkindness in the Jewish Kabbalah. In Western esotericism and Christian Kabbalah for the Qliphoth, this view is flipped to refer to the Ga’ashekelah which translates to “The Smiting Ones“, “The Breakers“, or “The Devourers” and symbolizes wasting away the bountiful energy of the Divine Will causing exhaustion and suffocation from either misuse or misplaced love. White Rider is the first of the Four Horsemen of the Christian End of Times; he alternatively represents Jesus Christ, the Anti-Christ, or pestilence that devours the land and wastes it away. Incidentally, the Jewish Kabbalah symbolism for White, which refers to Lovingkindness and Mercy is changed to the mythology of Christianity’s symbolism for the color White which is warring against those who don’t accept Jesus Christ, spreading plague, and conquering their lands.
Gevurah: This one represents Yahweh’s absolute judgment upon humanity by strictly imposing punishment and humanity acknowledging its own limitations by accepting the Abrahamic God’s judgment. It is also symbolized by fire, which can imply damnation in hellfire. The Sephirot symbolism is supposed to mean ruling by righteousness, but it’s Qliphoth counterpart is Golachab which refers to “Burned Bodies” and symbolizes those who wish to force their will upon others through their own Strength. Atlus Japan is cleverly mocking the very notion of the Abrahamic God’s judgment making any coherent sense since Trumpeter is meant to call for the End of Times in Christian mythology. The End of Times clearly contradicts ruling by Righteousness and is imposing the ill will of Yahweh upon others by force. Additionally, Demifiend ending his battles with Trumpeter being the last fight for the Candelabra\Menorah of Godliness represents overthrowing the Absolute One’s judgment and breaking his own limits to surpass the Abrahamic God.
Tiphereth: represents beauty. The Qliphoth version, Thagirion, represents ugliness and a revolt against God. That perfectly fits Mother Harlot’s background. I doubt much more needs to be said on this one.
Nezach or Netzach: It’s Qliphoth variant is Theumiel, which is the “Fouled Substance of God” since Daisoujou is a reference to a terrible Buddhist practice called Sokushinbutsu whereby a monk’s body would be entombed and exhumed a thousand days later, and if relatively intact would be hailed as a God.
Hod: Hod’s Qliphoth variant is Theuniel (not to be confused with Theumiel with an m), which symbolizes “The Filthy Wailing Ones of God” and also refer to failed creations. They use Hell Biker’s motorcycle roar and the homage to Ghost Rider to symbolize this.
Yesod: the Sephirot form refers to communication, connection, and contact with the external. The Christian Kabbalah evidently claims this was from Jewish Kabbalah, but it seems to just be their own appropriation which was then altered to match-up with Christian beliefs. Atlus Japan obviously reversed the Sephirot symbolism with Matador symbolizing brutal competition and violence. The Qliphoth variant of Gamaliel apparently infers either sexual violence or an unpalatable sexual desire. Atlus Japan seems to have chosen to flip the Christian Kabbalah view of communication and connection by having a brutal competitive fight to the death and strayed away from anything sexually explicit.
Malkuth: This one is the most intriguing Sephirot and Qliphoth to me. This is Demifiend’s first Candelabra\Menorah in the game and the symbolism for the Qliphoth can certainly be seen here. The Sephirot of Malkuth symbolizes worldly matters, but also placing all ten other emanations of the divine into a single point of materialization for Malkuth which is said to be analogous to a King ruling the subjects of his Kingdom.
The Sephirot of Malkuth is also symbolic of a Bride who will be united with their Bridegroom. Recall that the first person who actually had the Candelabra of Sovereignty was the Lady in Black. Evidently, it was more than just window-dressing. The Qliphoth of Malkuth, referred to as Nehemoth which means Night Specter or Whisperers, is explained as a location where the Archdemon Namaah is sitting upon a throne atop a double-cubed altar with a veil over her face. The description of the double-cubed Altar and a veil over the woman’s face fits entirely with the Lady in Black standing at an altar with double-cubed flooring while she tells you about the secrets of the multiverse. Namaah is most well-known as the sister of Lilith and is sometimes incorrectly confused with a woman of the same name who is a sister to Tubal Cain. The most bizarre aspect of learning this is that the Demifiend should technically be married to the Lady in Black upon completing the Fifth Kalpa and meeting Lucifer and the Lady in person. Atlus Japan may not have used that particular part of the Christian Kabbalah mythology, but there is another aspect that they probably did use and this time for Demifiend. The power and shape of Malkuth’s Qliphoth equal to the culmination of all prior demonic forces and is signified by a legion of demons. This neatly coincides with the True Demon Ending’s final scene.
Perhaps most damning is that this completely discredits Eirikrjs’s nonsensical JJCAT theory insofar as SMT Nocturne since the Kabbalah symbolism would heavily infer the New Testament God and not the Old Testament God as per his wild and erroneous accusations. I’d like for you all to reflect on how outrageous and possibly dangerous it was for Eirikrjs to irresponsibly and erroneously charge Atlus Japan with accusations of anti-Semitism without thoroughly factchecking his own so-called evidence. Not only was it filled with nonsensical quips that only he himself probably found funny, but his disposition and arguments come from a place of accusing all Japanese people of being ultra-nationalist, accusing them of being filled with hatred for other cultures, and when people criticize his views, he ignores the criticisms. He only responds to the people who agree with him; why exactly? In order to protect his racist views on Japanese people. I’d bet that’s the real reason that he doesn’t respond to criticism at all; it’s because he doesn’t want to let go of his hatred and racism for Japanese people in general. I think his maligning of Atlus Japan with false accusations and refusing to accept criticism when he’s wrong for discriminating against an entire ethnic group more than prove this point.
But wait! Perhaps you think I’ve gone too far. Even if I’ve convinced you that Eirikrjs points about the symbolism obviously being a reference to the Tree of Death and not the Tree of Life is probably true; that doesn’t make Eirikrjs wrongful statements an act of racism. Perhaps he didn’t know about the Tree of Death and the Qliphoth? Unfortunately, his Questions and Answers responses show otherwise:
See that latter part? “I’m convinced that if you’ve only ever seen the Kabbalah in games, anime, and the like, you’ve never actually seen it correctly implemented or represented; its theming tends to be little more than window dressing.” Ask yourself, if he was really being sincere, how did he not even think of applying the Qliphoth and Tree of Death to SMT Nocturne? It’s not difficult and if anything, the Fiends should have made it glaringly self-evident. Just consider the possibility that he deliberate lied. I say this because honestly, how could he not have put it together that Fiends who symbolize death would thereby symbolize the Tree of Death when he understood what the Qliphoths were?
To conclude on a positive note: If you wish to learn more about how Kabbalah works in a concrete manner, I personally don’t see it as anything more than a more studious form of Tarot reading or Horoscope reading with a religious veneer after learning how it works, please read a Jewish Rabbi’s explanation for it from a Reformed Jewish website. With all due respect, beliefs in rituals that summon angels and demons aren’t deeply intense or intellectual, they’re mythology that people should place into the entertainment industry where they belong. Jewish Kabbalah itself has three different methodologies from its ancient traditions and none of which have any coherence or criteria apart from people having “revelations” about the mythological beliefs that have no scientific evidence to support them.
If you’re interested in more positive SMT related content, please take a look at how SMT Nocturne brilliantly utilized Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch philosophy. SMT Nocturne itself seems to be a homage to Nietzsche’s magnum opus, his philosophical fantasy novel known as Thus Spake Zarathustra. Otherwise, take a look at how at the extent Atlus Japan translated an obscure 17th century Occult European text to utilize in early SMT games.
Update: A fellow MegaTen fan, Larrue, provided me with scans of his copy of the 25th Anniversary edition of MegaTen Maniacs where Atlus Japan shared their development documents. All credits go to Larrue for this:
For more on Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne:
Kaneko Interviews:
Demon Bible, 1UP Interview regarding Nocturne (Red Hot Chili Peppers as inspiration and Gnostic view of the world as inspiration for Nocturne) and Kazuma Kaneko Works III / Different Translation.
Non-SMT3 Interviews or Artbook Translations: SMT NINE Demons in Kaneko Works III (Eternal Recurrence Concept of Nietzsche referenced in Maria bio), Kaneko Works I, and Kaneko Works II.
From Atlus West: Atlus West Interview with Vice on how they translated the HD Remaster Script
Fan Content by Others
Other Blogs:
Philosophy of MegaTen Encyclopedia by Beadman
Sam Hatting’s Nietzschean themes in Nocturne (that inspired all of this)
SMT Nocturne and Space in Design by LazyMetaphors
Artemis-Maia Analysis of Amaravati and the Menorahs (that inspired my Qliphoth References) on Eirikrjs Blog
Youtube Content Creators:
SMT Theology by Kid Capes
Larrue’s Nocturne videos related to Themes and Development:
- Story of SMT Nocturne
- Lost SMT3 Nocturne’s Early Draft Concepts
- Kazuma Kaneko’s Art Team
- Learning more about Kazuma Kaneko
Deconstructing Nocturne’s Formulas by Robin and Zephyr
Rasen Bran’s Cathedral of Shadows Podcast:
Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3
Fither’s Lost Nocturne Tech Demo
The 4th Snake’s Opinion Piece on Nocturne’s Freedom Ending
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You say that it’s obviously abbout the Qliphoth but the documents you posted in Japanese only mention the Sephirot. Furthermore, the Qliphoth are still a jewish concept (and so is Metatron being God’s second-in-command for that matter), there’s no reason to assume they chose Christian interpretations of the Kabbalah specially since Christian Kabbalah is barely even a thing, there were only a few unpopular attemps by Christian mystics to interpret their faith using it and they never caught on. A lot of the stuff you’re quoting in this article is either wrong or just regular Jewish Kabbalah.
That’s not true. Christian Kabbalah is what influenced and inspired “Christian Science” since it’s really just Christian occultism borrowing Jewish concepts. The initial concepts are indeed Jewish, but the usage is from the appropriated Christian format and Christian Kabbalah is so popular that they have their own news organizations and media. “Christian Science Monitor” for example was developed based upon the popularity of “Christian Science” which itself was inspired by Christian Kabbalah. The Sephiroth and Qliphoth are basically the same thing. Atlus references the Sephiroth, but outwardly and clearly uses the Qliphoth since the forms the Fiends take refer to death, the concept is being used to promote the idea of Demi-fiend overcoming death with a confluence of Ubermensch philosophy and an amalgamation of religious concepts, and the ending of the True Demon / Rejection route is specifically the Qliphoth story of Malkuth — the Menorah that was first given to the Demi-fiend.
It’s interesting that you’re now downplaying the Sephiroth and Qliphoth as “basically the same thing” when the whole point of your tirade here is that Eirikrjs got it wrong when he thought it was about the Sephiroth and it was actually about the Qliphoth. Guess if they aren’t so different there wasn’t even a need to write this, huh?
You are also just making shit up at this point to try to salvage any notion that you actually know what you are talking about. Christian Science has just about nothing to do with the Kabbalah and you can check yourself by googling “site:https://www.csmonitor.com/ “kabbalah” ” without the outer quotes. You will find all mentions in the newspaper you mentioned of “kabbalah”. The archive goes back to at least the 80s, and yet there are only about 20 results, most of which mention the Kabbalah in passing, not as the actual main theme of the articles. (Even more interesting, it pretty much always gets described as JEWISH mysticism, since the christian variety is nothing but a historical anomaly and still pretty much uses all of the foundation of the jewish original).
I reiterate: the documents you posted yourself only reference the Sephiroth, not the Qliphoth. And even if they did use Qliphoth as a theme, that’s still straight up JEWISH Kabbalah.
You’ve admitted that you don’t actually care about any of this stuff and think that it’s nonsense, it’s clear that you didn’t do any research into it and just went looking for stuff that would contradict Eirikrjs’s theory on wikipedia and misinterpreted the Qliphoh and a bunch of other stuff as just exclusive to Christian Kabbalah when it absolutely isn’t.
If you want to keep your pet theory that despite all this it definitely is about Christian Kabbalah for some reason, sure, go for it, but it’s just your headcanon, there is zero evidence for it.
Okay, I think you like going into insults as responses. The context of saying they’re the same thing was not arguing that they weren’t distinct. The Qliphoth is the shadow / death format of the Sephiroth. That’s its intended use. Its lessons are to present the lack of Yahweh’s presence. The Christian Kabbalah format is used repeatedly; example, Matador represents the opposite of accord (the Christian format of Kabbalah) and not sexual excitation (the Jewish format of Kabbalah).
Maybe try to have an honest conversation and not just insults by taking comments out of context to try to make “gotcha” statements.
Ok, I will turn down the snark, but I feel like I was just using the tone you were using against Eirikrjs here. You called him “racist”, you said you would address his “ignorance and lies”, you even accuse him of never even playing SMT in the first place. I don’t think this post was made in good faith. If you had simply shared your view that you think this is about the Christian Kabbalah instead of framing it as an objective debunking full of insults to someone else, I don’t think anyone would complain at all. Still, sure I will be more polite than you were to Eirikrjs.
This time I’ll try to divide my argument into different points, if you are going to respond, please address them as I’ll lay them out, so we can have an orderly discussion.
POINT 1: We have the documents you posted on the end of the article from Atlus. They speak only of the Sephirot. Not of the Qliphoth. A big part of your argument is about the difference between the Sephirot and the Qliphoth, I would say it’s even a central point, since it’s why you say Eirikrjs’s interpretation is wrong. Yet the documents make no mention of the Qliphoth. The Atlus documents show no indication that they were using the Qliphoth specifically, only the Sephirot.
POINT 2: You raise some questions about the interpretation of the Kabbalah being used as a journey to Kether, yet that is exactly what is depicted in the documents you posted.
POINT 3: As you yourself mention in the passage “The Qliphoth variant of Binah, Satoriel”, the Qliphoth had their own names, separate from the Sephirot. If Atlus so clearly wanted to invoke the Qliphoth instead of the Sephirot, it is a strange decision indeed to not simply use those names.
POINT 4: The Menorah Demifiend received along the game have names like “Menorah of Foundation” and “Menorah of Beauty”. Their names match the meanings of the Sephirot, not the Qliphoth.
POINT 5: You point out that Eirikrjs doesn’t know about the 32 paths of wisdom, only the 22 paths of the Tree of Life. Yet the difference is merely that the 32 paths of wisdom include the 10 sephirot, so it doesn’t really change his argument in the article that some of the Kabbalistic “journeys” depicted like the menorah collection order and placement orders don’t fit within the paths of the Tree of Life.
Here’s my reply: https://pastebin.com/CDrzLP8U
Responded to your other comment, which is what you had in that link.
Ok, I will turn down the snark, but I feel like I was just using the tone you were using against Eirikrjs here. You called him “racist”, you said you would address his “ignorance and lies”, you even accuse him of never even playing SMT in the first place. I don’t think this post was made in good faith. If you had simply shared your view that you think this is about the Christian Kabbalah instead of framing it as an objective debunking full of insults to someone else, I don’t think anyone would complain at all. Still, sure I will be more polite than you were to Eirikrjs.
This time I’ll try to divide my argument into different points, if you are going to respond, please address them as I’ll lay them out, so we can have an orderly discussion.
POINT 1: We have the documents you posted on the end of the article from Atlus. They speak only of the Sephirot. Not of the Qliphoth. A big part of your argument is about the difference between the Sephirot and the Qliphoth, I would say it’s even a central point, since it’s why you say Eirikrjs’s interpretation is wrong. Yet the documents make no mention of the Qliphoth. The Atlus documents show no indication that they were using the Qliphoth specifically, only the Sephirot.
POINT 2: You raise some questions about the interpretation of the Kabbalah being used as a journey to Kether, yet that is exactly what is depicted in the documents you posted.
POINT 3: As you yourself mention in the passage “The Qliphoth variant of Binah, Satoriel”, the Qliphoth had their own names, separate from the Sephirot. If Atlus so clearly wanted to invoke the Qliphoth instead of the Sephirot, it is a strange decision indeed to not simply use those names.
POINT 4: The Menorah Demifiend received along the game have names like “Menorah of Foundation” and “Menorah of Beauty”. Their names match the meanings of the Sephirot, not the Qliphoth.
POINT 5: You point out that Eirikrjs doesn’t know about the 32 paths of wisdom, only the 22 paths of the Tree of Life. Yet the difference is merely that the 32 paths of wisdom include the 10 sephirot, so it doesn’t really change his argument in the article that some of the Kabbalistic “journeys” depicted like the menorah collection order and placement orders don’t fit within the paths of the Tree of Life.
POINT 6: You argue that the fact that 6 out of 11 fiends being Christian-themed means that this is all about the Christian Kabbalah. I find this on its face a bit confusing since if they wanted the Christian theme to be so obvious, surely they would simply make all 11 Christian. I would give you that Dante can just be an exception but it’s bizarre to include Buddhism and real world gang references if that was their intent.
POINT 7: Christian Kabbalah never developed as a huge field of studies the way that Jewish Kabbalah did. You say a lot of times in this article things like “Christian Kabbalah considers this and that” but what exactly is the source that you are using? There have not been too many prominent Christian Kabbalists and they often have extremely contradictory views. Sure, there’s variation within Jewish Kabbalah as well, but they do at least basically converge on what’s on the Zohar.
POINT 8: A lot of your interpretation seems to come from this website specifically: https://theomagica.com/on-the-nature-of-the-qlippoth, from my brief search, it seems like he does not have academic credentials related to the Kabbalah, only in Communication and Psychology. So already, there’s a red flag there, but also, he does not specify when he is talking about Christian vs Jewish Kabbalah. In fact, if you look at his sources, you will see that they are overwhelmingly about the Jewish Kabbalah. There are in fact, more sources about the esoteric Hermetic Kabbalah than about Christian Kabbalah, and judging from the rest of the site, it seems like that esotericism and occultism are his main interests. So I ask, how do you know that the interpretations you pulled from the site are specifically “Christian” and not from other points of view?
POINT 9: A lot of your interpretations seem to come from a past version of the qliphoth article on Wikipedia accessible here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210506024338/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qliphoth
Most of the information there comes from one book by Bill Heidrick which was later removed from the article for not being an adequate source. Furthermore, Bill Heidrick also writes from an esoteric Golden Dawn perspective, as you can see in his own website: https://www.billheidrick.com/, not from a Christian Kabbalah perspective.
POINT 10: A lot of your post is about the specific interpretation on how the qliphoth match each of the fiends. I honestly don’t have the energy to go through all of them so broadly I’ll point two problems:
1. You are using a lot of sources which are not necessarily based on Christian Kabbalah.
2. Most of the interpretations seem like a stretch to me anyway. Being a fellow skeptic, I’m sure you’re aware of the way people sometimes will make roundabout interpretations to fit their life into some tarot card reading for example. Most of the Qliphoth have negative meanings, so it’s not hard to find some vague connection of those qualities to evil demonic forces.
To give a couple of examples of problematic interpretations: Hell Biker representing the “The Filthy Wailing Ones of God” seems like a gigantic stretch just based on his motorcycle and also ignores the rest of the paragraph of the book “The Kabbalah & Magic of Angels” from which you got that, where Samael, the Qliphoth equivalent of Hod, is described as a giant serpent with twelve wings that rules over two million fallen angels. Doesn’t really sound at all like what we have in the game which is just a reference to a real-life biker gang.
Another one would be in the section talking about Kether, where you don’t mention the primary meaning of Thamiel (the qliphoth equivalent) listed on “The Kabbalah & Magic of Angels” which is that it represents duality, a division of the godhead, a fracturing of something that is supposed to be One. This description doesn’t match Pale Rider and it feels like a bit of selection bias to include only the parts which you can fit into your theory.
At the end of the day, like I said earlier, you could shift those qliphoth around to the other fiends and still come up with some roundabout way of how they work. Thagirion represents ugliness? Well, they’re all rotting skeletons so it fits any of them. Golachab represents desire to destroy? These are all evil demons fighting each other for menorah anyway. You will not find actual strong connections between the fiends and the Qliphoth. “The Kabbalah & Magic of Angels” even mentions a bunch of demons which are actually related to the Qliphoth like Belphegor and Satan. These demons are in SMT already, why not use them if they wanted to be accurate to the Qliphoth?
EXTRA POINT: This is not intended to be a formal argument, but more of an observation on this whole thing. Pretty much Eirikrjs’s entire point is that Megaten just uses the Kabbalah imagery and concepts to be “cool” without fully integrating it in a way that makes sense. Is that so hard to believe in a series that depicts Thor siding with the US army or the Egyptian god Seth as being one half of Satan? You claim in this article that you don’t think much of superstition and mythology aside from its entertainment factor, well, it seems to me that Atlus thought the same and just picked a bunch of stuff from different sources and just mixed them in a way that looked and sounded cool without doing a ton of research about it. I actually think there is nothing wrong with that, but if someone wants to criticize these games as a poor depiction of Kabbalah or whatever other mythological/religious beliefs, that is a fair criticism. It’s not one that affects my personal enjoyment of the games, but people are entitled to their opinion and if they want accurate portrayals of religion and mythology, Megaten is just not for them.
CONCLUSION: I think there is basically zero evidence that Nocturne intended to utilize Qliphoth instead of Sephirot and actually zero evidence that it was supposed to be a specific Christian interpretation of the Kabbalah instead of Jewish.
Point 1: That’s an argument in favor of the Qliphoth. The Sephiroth represents life, the Qliphoth represents Death. The Fiends represent death; their dialogue is either Demi-fiend needs to accept death or each of them asking if he wants to surpass death and obtain a demon’s heart.
Point 2: You’re not making a clear point here. Demi-fiend began with Malkuth specifically to show the reverse of the Sephiroth.
Point 3: No, it’s not. The Qliphoth is the Sephiroth in a death format. That’s something you seem to ignore. The Qliphoth is designed to show the opposite of the principles of the Sephiroth.
Point 4: …They’re held by demons who hold the opposite of their founding ideals. Mother Harlot is clearly not meant to be beautiful; the game even makes a joke of this by having a cut scene where her skull-face is revealed right before the battle begins.
Point 5: It changes it completely. The Kabbalah does not have a set order.
Point 6: It’s a mix of religious concepts, to be sure. But, Christian Kabbalah is the most prominent and purposeful. Lucifer is the leader for that reason.
Point 7: You’re contradicting your own argument here and it reveals to me that you don’t actually understand what Kabbalah means or is.
Point 8: These portions “he does not have academic credentials related to the Kabbalah” and “There are in fact, more sources about the esoteric Hermetic Kabbalah than about Christian Kabbalah, and judging from the rest of the site, it seems like that esotericism and occultism are his main interests. So I ask, how do you know that the interpretations you pulled from the site are specifically “Christian” and not from other points of view?” are very revealing.
First of all, I actually did explain this, if you had bothered to read all the articles, by citing Jewish Kabbalah explanations itself from a Jewish Rabbi.
Second of all: You do not understand what Kabbalah is. “Kabbalah” literally means “occultism” so a guy being enthusiastic about occultism and being interested in Jewish Kabbalah (Jewish Occultism) and Christian Kabbalah (Christian Occultism) is a massive point in favor of my argument.
Let me be clear by what I mean: There is no such thing as “academic” Kabbalah. There is also no central principle or teaching or philosophy behind Kabbalah. Kabbalah itself, Jewish or Christian, defines itself as non-rational. It prides itself in being unknowable, beyond human knowledge, and based on feeling without any logical consistency to it. The “real” Kabbalah is based on the idea that there is no basics, no principles, and no structure. Apart from repeating Torah verses and reading the Bible, all a Jewish Kabbalist has to do is feel as if something in Kabbalah means something and it becomes valid on the basis of faith. Christian Kabbalah took this concept and became even more nonsensical. That’s why esoteric forms of Christianity, based upon faith alone, are technically all “Kabbalah” because Kabbalah means Occultism and is founded upon being “non-rational” to the human mind. In other words, there was never and can never be an “academic” Kabbalah. The very idea flies in the face of what Kabbalah is — which is Occultism. No different than paranoid conspiracy theories, Saudi Arabia’s laws against black magic, or completely deranged ideas that land people in the penitentiary. A bunch of ignorant, bronze age inhabitants came-up with spiritual mumbo-jumbo and because the West prides itself on being rational and scientific; nobody questioned a bunch of old people making up garbage, accumulating garbage for thousands of years, and calling it some deep and meaningful study. Jewish Kabbalah and Christian Kabbalah are the theological equivalent of Islam’s Hadiths. It’s complete nonsense that people made-up and hold close to them as sacred. And I don’t mean simply that it is a supernatural belief; I mean it is supernatural beliefs that pretends to have some deep structure, but doesn’t. Kabbalah is Occultism and Kabbalists openly state that their beliefs are “non-rational” if you probe deeper. It’s no different than Islamists and other Muslim extremists declaring “Hadiths” as “Hadith Sciences” to make their nonsensical beliefs have a false air of respectability, when it’s all fakery.
9. They were removed because people got offended that their occult beliefs were exposed to public scrutiny. Kabbalah is not some respectable social science or religious study. It’s literally occultism. That’s what the word Kabbalah means.
10. Samael was already added as an optional boss and companion in the original Nocturne. While I’m sure they wanted to add Hell Biker for “coolness”, this is notwithstanding that the manner in which they used him fits. His introduction is him roaring his motorbike throughout the entire cut scene while threatening to violently kill you.
The conclusion portion seems to just consistent of your fundamental misunderstanding of what Kabbalah is. Atlus using bits and pieces is valid, because Kabbalah is specifically non-rational. It never had a “valid” manner of doing things. Technically speaking, even in the Jewish theology context, Kaneko citing the Old Testament as his favorite book and making Kabbalah concepts in the game fits within the “non-rational” Jewish Kabbalistic model. The only two points against him would be that he wasn’t middle-aged at the time of making it and wasn’t himself a Jewish person. Very weak arguments, if you think about it. Nevertheless, the dialogue of each of the fiends, who they chose to make, and their significance points to Christian Kabbalah.
POINT 1: You didn’t actually address the point. The point is that in the documents you posted where Atlus shows the research they’ve done about the Kabbalah, they only include the Sephiroth, they do not mention the Qliphoth. They even included an explanation of what the Sephiroth are. Why wouldn’t they helpfully include an explanation of the Qliphoth as well, since that is what the game is supposedly about according to you?
POINT 2: Your words: “His assumption on Kether being the goal seems to have been his own misunderstanding.” Yet the last image you posted is a literal path to Kether.
POINT 3: What do you mean, “no, it’s not?” You’ve cited those names yourself multiple names. You mention that the Tiphereth version is called Thagirion. You’ve mentioned that Chokmah has a counterpart of Ghogiel. The Qliphoth have names. Why not use those names instead of the names for the sephiroth?
POINT 4: Yet again Atlus had another opportunity to explicitly use the Qliphoth but still they only directly reference the Sephiroth. If they so clearly wanted to reference the Qliphoth, then they probably should have actually put it somewhere in the game.
POINT 5: It’s not about a set order. It’s about the diferent paths between the Sephiroth. There is no path that goes directly between Malkhut and Binah for example. You have to take several other paths to get there. The point he made is that if you line up the placement order and obtainment order of the menorah, they do not actually work by following those paths. You’d have to follow paths that don’t exist. Adding the 10 sephiroth literally changes nothing in this argument.
POINT 6: Then that is a concession that this is maybe not so clearly just about Christian Kabbalah after all. (Never mind that it’s not about that at all)
POINT 7: It’s in fact a great argument which you don’t have an answer to. You are not even aware of whether the sources you are using are Christian or not.
POINT 8:
PART 1: You mean this article: “https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/spirituality/what-kabbalah”? It’s a short simplification of what Kabbalah is which doesn’t even mention Christianity. How do you use this to differentiate about whether your sources are Christian or not?
PART 2: You are the one who does not actually understand that I was referring to Hermetic Kabbalah. Which is separate from Christian and Jewish Kabbalah and was largely developed by the Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization who this Bill guy seems rather fond of. It arose and evolved MUCH later than Christian Kabbalah and was influenced by a lot of pagan occultist beliefs. So again, how do you differentiate between what’s Hermetic Kabbalah and Christian Kabbalah?
Your very long paragraph about the Kabbalah being fake misses the point. I am agnostic and generally do not care for superstition, I have no belief in the Kabbalah as an actual thing which can reveal mystic truths about the world. There is still obviously such a thing as “historically accurate” Kabbalah. Kabbalah as it was actually practiced, the beliefs and rituals that people actually had. When I questioned their academic credentials I meant that they do not have credentials as HISTORIANS of that period, who understand the nuances and different beliefs that different groups who practiced Kabbalah had. Surely you wouldn’t believe what a random person on the internet told you about early Buddhist beliefs or something. You’d trust historians to do that.
POINT 9: Again, it doesn’t matter if Kabbalah or Buddhism are not true. You can’t just say “early Buddhists taught that getting fucked in the ass was the fastest road to enlightenment” and expect people to buy it. It’s not about the information being literally true, it’s about whether it actually matches what was believed and practiced historically.
POINT 10: Ok, so that’s Samael, what about all the other demons? Your book mentions that Adramelech is an archdemon of Samael so that would be perfect. Isn’t it interesting that any demons actually associated with the Qliphoth aren’t used as fiends?
You then keep saying that Kabbalah is non-rational so it doesn’t matter. Look, you’re the one who started making a big deal that Nocturne is not making references to one type of Kabbalah, but another. So clearly, you do think that there are identifiable traits that you can analyze and see if they fit one framework or another. Once more, it does not matter if Kabbalah works or not. It was practiced and believed by real people who had specific thoughts and rituals and if you want to criticize the game based on how accurately those beliefs were portrayed, you are free to do that! That is all what Eirikrjs did.
At this point I want to reiterate again the most important point which you have dodged consistently: you don’t actually have any idea whether what you talked about comes from Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah or even Hermetic Kabbalah. Most of your sources have a Jewish or Hermetic Kabbalah focus, so this post completely fails to prove what you were trying to prove.
Point 1: The Qliphoth is based upon the Sephiroth. While different in usage, the basic principle is that the Sephiroth represents life and the Qliphoth represents death. The purpose of the narrative is to allude to the Qliphoth. You’re ignoring the in-game evidence; for example, every “peephole” requires you to walk to a dead, corrupted tree in which Lucifer holds an audience with you and an army of demons. I don’t understand how it being a Qliphoth is even an argument with most people claiming it was the Sephiroth. The Qliphoth imagery, allegory, and metaphors including in the dialogue is incredibly obvious.
Point 2: I don’t understand your point. That’s research material. That doesn’t mean that they used it exactly as shown. That’s just doing research. They did not claim to have based it upon that specifically and the fact an Arcana tradition exists; and Atlus is very fond of Arcana; suggests they didn’t intend to. Moreover, if they were going to use it, they would have started with Kether; they started with Malkuth. In the Hasidic tradition, it begins with Kether and ends with Kether. In Nocturne, Demi-fiend obtains Malkuth, it guides him to the other Menorahs, and for the Fifth Kalpa, he opens the Kalpa by putting Malkuth as the final, lone Menorah.
Point 3: 1. It would ruin the allusion and themes, if they hammered it home too literally and that’s considered amateur storytelling by most literary critics and authors globally, but especially in the Western tradition which Japan does follow. 2. They’re using it as a critique of Nietzschean themes of Life-affirmation. In the dialogue with Daisoujou, he adamantly demands the Demi-fiend accept death; but the Demi-fiend is implied to yearn for a demon’s heart and eternity as a form of life-affirmation. This theme is repeated in the latter Fiend dialogues such as Mother Harlot’s beast. It’s a juxtaposition and exemplifies Lucifer’s final words in TDE about Demi-fiend heaping death upon death to destroy the old value systems for his own life-affirmation.
Point 4: That is genuinely considered poor, amateurish writing among people who take the writing craft seriously in media in the US, Japan, and globally under the Western tradition of story writing. Atlus quite deliberately wanted Nocturne to appeal to Western markets given the lack of explicit reference to YHVH and usage of Western cultural themes of both Nietzsche and US filmography as inspiration. It’s partly why the Anti-Woke crowd can’t stand most Woke stories; they hammer it in so obviously without encouraging readers / viewers to be curious and speculate.
Point 5: That’s not even the traditional order of the Sephiroth. Eirikrjs made that idea up himself. The traditional Hasidic set order is beginning with Kether and ending with Kether. Demi-fiend began with Malkuth and ended with Malkuth. So Eirikrjs was unequivocally wrong when he said that, even if you were basing it off the most ancient Jewish tradition and wanted to argue that it was meant to be Jewish Kabbalah.
Point 6: Yes, I’ve been arguing that it was mainly Christian Kabbalah from the start. I never said otherwise. They used certain Dharmic concepts for some of it; but the purpose was to use and mix Christian Kabbalah and Dharmic faith traditions to explore Nietzschean themes of the Ubermensch philosophy.
Point 7: No, because Kabbalah’s traditions are based upon being “intuitive” to the individual Kabbalist. As such, the only “correct” way to make any sense of something that bases itself on pure emotional feeling with no actual guidelines or logical system is to use the basic format. Atlus used the basic format of Christian Kabbalah. That’s why you fight Matador as the first Fiend fight, since he represents the opposite of friendship in the Christian Kabbalah context. If it was Jewish Kabbalah, it would be some sort of sexual demon similar to Lilith. That didn’t happen. The Lady in Black, who in my opinion seems to be alluded to being Archdemon Naamah, only provides support and strong faith in you. Even as the Old Lady, she never tries to hinder your journey at all. If it had been Jewish Kabbalah, it should have started with some equivalent of her or some other sex demon as the first boss.
Point 8 and 9: Thank you for clarifying. Unfortunately, this runs into what Kabbalah is actually suppose to be. Kabbalah prides itself as “non-rational” and the practitioner — Jews, Christians, and even Paganists — only need to give an intuitive feeling as to what Kabbalah means to them. What this means is; both the Sephiroth and Qliphoth can technically be absolutely anything and it would be correct. The only caveats are that in the Jewish tradition, you just have to read the Bible and repeat Torah verses after reaching middle age first before you essentially make-up whatever you want. In the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish tradition, you do the same but also begin with Kether and end with Kether. In the Christian tradition, there’s no limits. You don’t have to stop at either Kether or anything specific. You can stop wherever you want. The Sephiroth can mean whatever you want, because all you have to do is “feel” that it is “true” to you. That’s what I mean when I say it is “non-rational” because Kabbalists themselves, even the Hasidic Jewish traditionalists who speak publicly about it, adamantly argue this point. There is no guideline or structure to this “ancient” tradition and thus no “correct” way to do it. Throughout this entire tradition, especially the Christian context, it has never been true that there was a specific way. The best the Ultra-Orthodox tradition can say is that the person doing it wrong is wrong for not being a Middle-aged person who was born Jewish. The only caveat is that they need to read the Bible and repeat Torah verses. That’s not the same as arguing there’s principles and guidelines to it. There isn’t. We are not talking about a college social science class or the scientific method. We’re talking about a faith tradition in every sense of the word. It’s social equivalent understanding in English is simply “Occultism” — just because it’s been around since approximately 1 BC or even before that, doesn’t mean there was ever some deep analytic method or set of rules for it. No such thing exists for Kabbalah. You have to fundamentally understand that this is the backdrop of what Atlus used when they used Christian Kabbalah.
Point 10: The demons they use are to deliberately placed to thematically allude to the concept of the Christian End of Times. Apart from one or two that they had to add based on Jewish Kabbalah, like Daisoujou, because the Christian equivalent was about eating an apple and had nothing to do with personal characteristics of growth and learning, the whole purpose of the theme is to be a metaphor for the Christian End of Times on a Multiversal scale in the story itself. They chose characters like Daisoujou and Hell Biker to avoid any inference to Jewish Kabbalah because they were quite clearly making great pains to avoid any intention of anti-Semitism. So again, Christian Kabbalah.
And also, that’s why I called Eirikrjs a bigot and a racist. He literally accused Atlus of anti-Semitism, something they did not do. I don’t understand why so many of you seem more concerned with protecting the wild accusations of some blogger and not challenging the wild and erroneous accusations that he spewed against innocent people that did not do what he accused them of doing. That is not okay. He also didn’t even double-check his facts before doing it. The only tradition he could have used to claim this was the Hasidic tradition, but the Hasidic tradition starts and ends with Kether; something he was clearly unaware of, because he thought Kether was solely suppose to be the end. It’s suppose to begin and end with Kether. Atlus Japan had it begin and end with Malkuth, the demon in charge is a Christian mythological figure, the demons used are to portray Christian mythological themes in the End of Times, and the ending is Lucifer – a Christian demon – heralding the creation of the Anti-Christ, the version of Demi-fiend that becomes a True Demon.
You want to keep claiming that I’m essentially an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If that makes you happy, go ahead and it seems nothing I say will ever convince you otherwise about me anyway. I believe you use that route because you don’t have a convincing argument.
RESPONSE: https://pastes.io/l4cifz2ugl
Ok, I will turn down the snark, but I feel like I was just using the tone you were using against Eirikrjs here. You called him “racist”, you said you would address his “ignorance and lies”, you even accuse him of never even playing SMT in the first place. I don’t think this post was made in good faith. If you had simply shared your view that you think this is about the Christian Kabbalah instead of framing it as an objective debunking full of insults to someone else, I don’t think anyone would complain at all. Still, sure I will be more polite than you were to Eirikrjs.
This time I’ll try to divide my argument into different points, if you are going to respond, please address them as I’ll lay them out, so we can have an orderly discussion.
POINT 1: We have the documents you posted on the end of the article from Atlus. They speak only of the Sephirot. Not of the Qliphoth. A big part of your argument is about the difference between the Sephirot and the Qliphoth, I would say it’s even a central point, since it’s why you say Eirikrjs’s interpretation is wrong. Yet the documents make no mention of the Qliphoth. The Atlus documents show no indication that they were using the Qliphoth specifically, only the Sephirot.
POINT 2: You raise some questions about the interpretation of the Kabbalah being used as a journey to Kether, yet that is exactly what is depicted in the documents you posted.
I’ve realized you are just not willing to admit your mistakes so I’ll just summarize them. I’ll set aside issues of interpretation of the themes of Nocturne since even though your reading is absolutely insane, it’s still subjective, so I can’t disprove it objectively. The following are OBJECTIVE problems with your post:
1. You are presenting yourself as someone who has intimate knowledge of the Kabbalah, when you do not.
Your post is absolutely filled with errors about the Kabbalah. You invoke the 32 Paths of Wisdom in a nonsensical way that doesn’t actually matter to Eirikrjs’s stated point. You keep mentioning the “Hasidic interpretation starts and ends with Kether” as if there aren’t a bunch of different paths through the Tree of Life that symbolize different things. It can be for example, from top to bottom as an emanation of god’s attributes “flowing down” to Earth or from bottom to top as a spiritual journey as one gets closer to God. The point that Eirikrjs made is that if you look at the different “journeys” implied by Nocturne: the candelabra collection order and the candelabra placement order, you will find bizarre orders that don’t seem to mean anything and don’t even follow the 22 paths of the Tree of Life. Your own order, which mixes the candelabra collection and placement order, doesn’t make sense, as you’d have to go back from one of the sephirot from the 4th kalpa directly to Malkuth, a path which is not one of the 22 paths (and since the 32 paths are just the 22 + the sephirot themselves, they don’t make a difference).
2. Your sources are either flawed or not about the subject you’re covering. (This is by the way, the most important point, and one which you have dodged 3 times, let’s see if this will make 4)
I’ve identified 3 main sources of your article:
SOURCE 1.[https://web.archive.org/web/20210506024338/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qliphoth](https://web.archive.org/web/20210506024338/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qliphoth) – This is an old version of the wikipedia article about Qliphoth. You will not find a lot of the material you quoted in newer versions of the article because it was removed for being inadequate from a scholarly perspective. It was all taken from work by Bill Heidrick, who by the way is a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, and thus writes from the perspective of HERMETIC Kabbalah. Not Christian Kabbala.
SOURCE 2.
[https://theomagica.com/on-the-nature-of-the-qlippoth](https://theomagica.com/on-the-nature-of-the-qlippoth) – This is a website page written by someone who has no academic credentials related to the history of practice of the Kabbalah. It claims to be sourced from many different books, most of which are about HERMETIC (Synthetic) Kabbalah and JEWISH Kabbalah. It does cite 2 sources about Christian Kabbalah but that’s compared to the other 20.
SOURCE 3.The Kabbalah & Magic of Angels – This book is not written from a academic, historical perspective. It is written by a person who believes in the Kabbalah from a Hermetic perspective as you can see in quotes like “These parallels between science and Kabbalah cannot be coincidence. The various theories of physics and the teachings of Kabbalah blend harmoniously together”. Just like books written by modern Christians from an apologetics perspective tend to be full of misinformation about early Christian practice and texts, books written by modern Hermetic Kabbalists are not reliable sources about either Jewish or Christian Kabbalah. Additionally, Christianity is barely even mentioned in the book, so even if you did consider it authoritative, it doesn’t actually really cover the topic of your essay.
Even setting aside the reliability of your sources none of them even are about the topic you’re covering. Surely you think that’s an issue? In the case of the second source which does seem to take a little bit from Christian Kabbalah, how do you even know when it’s talking about Christian Kabbalah instead of the other two varieties? The article certainly doesn’t make that distinction for you.
4. You are trying to hide behind criticism of your erroneous claim by saying the Kabbalah is not rational
To clarify for the n-th time. I don’t think the Kabbalah actually “works” or whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that it was a real practice that existed in history which many people believed. If you want to portray it accurately, you can’t just do whatever. You keep stressing the “irrational” and “emotional” nature of it but all of that is besides the point. Are your claims historically accurate or not? Are you representing their practices in way which were actually practiced in history by the people you’re claiming practiced them? That is all that matters. Aditionally, you yourself obviously don’t even think it’s so completely “irrational” since you wrote an entire post based on your interpretation of its themes in Nocturne. If it is just all random gibberish that doesn’t mean anything, how were you even able to pick up the fact that Nocturne is about the Christian interpretation of Kabbalah over any of the others? The truth is that this a tactic on your part to avoid having to address the factual mistakes you’ve made about the Kabbalah.
Why am I doing all this you ask? Because you’re presenting yourself like an expert on something you are not, and people who do not know better will just read this and take it for face value, despite you clearly not doing the proper research. Your point about Eirikrjs being racist is something I disagree, too. I will say that from skimming your blog, the way you talk about Christians and Muslims seems way more bigoted than anything I’ve ever seen from him (You did write articles called “The Teachings of Jesus Christ lead to Child Rape in Churches” and “Islamophobia Doesn’t Exist and Neither Does Islamic Culture”). My hope is that people see your post for what it is: insane ramblings of an internet weirdo, not authoritative research.
A final observation: My working theory right now is that you for some reason thought that the Qliphoth were exclusively something from Christian Kabbalah, and that’s why you thought all these sources were about the topic. If that’s the case, I’ll graciously suggest a concession you can make: admit that the part about this being about Christian Kabbalah was off-base, and you can still keep the part about it being about the Qliphoth, since that is based on your very subjective interpretations of the themes of the story.
You ignored everything I said in order to accuse me of being an idiot. This is getting ridiculous. I will comment on your criticisms and ignore your accusations about me as an individual. I’ll let readers judge that portion for themselves without commenting on that.
Responding to your arguments:
1. I have never once done this. I merely pointed out Eirikrjs argument doesn’t make sense, because they did not make sense.
“Your post is absolutely filled with errors about the Kabbalah. You invoke the 32 Paths of Wisdom in a nonsensical way that doesn’t actually matter to Eirikrjs’s stated point. You keep mentioning the “Hasidic interpretation starts and ends with Kether” as if there aren’t a bunch of different paths through the Tree of Life that symbolize different things. It can be for example, from top to bottom as an emanation of god’s attributes “flowing down” to Earth or from bottom to top as a spiritual journey as one gets closer to God. The point that Eirikrjs made is that if you look at the different “journeys” implied by Nocturne: the candelabra collection order and the candelabra placement order, you will find bizarre orders that don’t seem to mean anything and don’t even follow the 22 paths of the Tree of Life. Your own order, which mixes the candelabra collection and placement order, doesn’t make sense, as you’d have to go back from one of the sephirot from the 4th kalpa directly to Malkuth, a path which is not one of the 22 paths (and since the 32 paths are just the 22 + the sephirot themselves, they don’t make a difference).”
There is no making sense nor are those orders part of the very Jewish tradition that he’s claiming that Nocturne failed at. The Jewish tradition is simply just a Jewish man who reaches Middle age, commits to lifelong study of the Torah to read back Torah verses, read the Bible, and then create new meanings of what the Kabbalah means. That’s it. That’s the foundation of Jewish Kabbalah — literally Jewish OCCULTISM. There is nothing else. The only two basic “structures” are: one, that the Sephiroth symbolizes life and the Qliphoth symbolizes death and two, Begin with Kether and end with Kether regardless of where you were on the Kabbalah prior.
2. There is no such thing as scholarly Kabbalah. There is no such thing as “academic” or “historical” or “academic, historical perspective” with Kabbalah. Kabbalah is NOT a social science. You cannot ignore this. You fundamentally do not understand that Kabbalah itself is literally occultism. I don’t know why I must repeat this point over and over. There is no “academic, historical” perspective with Kabbalah. There is no social science or humanities studies with Kabbalah. It is not different from paranoid conspiracy theories. It is not different from fantastical beliefs in black magic that Saudi Arabia still punishes for with public beheadings in accordance with their Sharia legal code.
3. Those sources cite the same Jewish texts that Kabbalists do and are based upon the Christian Kabbalah tradition. And, to paraphrase yet again, there is no such thing as “scholarly” Kabbalah.
4. No, I’m actually directly quoting Jewish Kabbalist practitioners. You would know this, if you had actually read the entirety of the source that you claimed to have read:
To quote “https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/spirituality/what-kabbalah” itself:
“Kabbalistic thought often is considered Jewish mysticism. Its practitioners tend to view the Creator and the Creation as a continuum, rather than as discrete entities, and they desire to experience intimacy with God. This desire is especially intense because of the powerful mystical sense of kinship that Kabbalists believe exists between God and humanity. Within the soul of every individual is a hidden part of God that is waiting to be revealed. Even mystics who refuse to describe such a fusion of God and man so boldly, still find the whole of Creation suffused in divinity, breaking down distinctions between God and the universe. Thus, the Kabbalist Moses Cordovero writes, “The essence of divinity is found in every single thing, nothing but It exists….It exists in each existent.”
There are three dimensions to almost all forms of Jewish mysticism, which are likely to be understood by only small numbers of people who possess specialized knowledge or interest in the topic:
*The investigative
*The experiential
*The practical
The investigative aspect of Kabbalah involves searching the hidden reality of the universe for secret knowledge about its origins and its organization—a quest that is more esoteric than mystical. In Jewish tradition, there are three ways esoteric knowledge can be obtained:
By interpreting sacred texts to uncover nistar (“hidden” meaning)
By oral transmission of tradition from a Kabbalistic master
By direct revelation, which might include visitation by an angel or Elijah, spirit possession, or other supra-rational experience”
And here, some direct information on the so-called “scholars” that you keep harping about:
“The practical dimension of Kabbalah involves rituals for gaining and exercising power to effect change in our world and in the celestial worlds beyond ours. This power is generated by performing commandments, summoning and controlling angelic and demonic forces, and otherwise tapping into the supernatural energies present in Creation. The practical aspect of Kabbalah furthers God’s intention in the world, advancing good, subduing evil, healing, and mending. The true master of this art fulfills the human potential to be a co-creator with God.
Historians of Judaism identify many schools of Jewish esotericism across time, each with its own unique interests and beliefs. Technically, the term “Kabbalah” applies only to writings that emerged in medieval Spain and southern France beginning in the 13th century. Beyond academia, however, the term “Kabbalah” is a catchall for all forms of Jewish esotericism.
As noted above, Jewish mystics are not like monks or hermits. Kabbalists tend to be part of social circles rather than lone seekers. With few exceptions, such as the wandering mystic Abraham Abulafia, esoterically inclined Jews tend to congregate in mystical associations, and it is not unusual for a single master to bring forth a new and innovative mystical school, which yields multiple generations of a particular mystical practice. Although until today Kabbalah has been the practice of select Jewish “circles,” most of what we know about it comes from the many literary works that have been recognized as “mystical” or “esoteric.”
From these mystical works, scholars have identified many distinctive mystical schools, including the Hechalot mystics, the German Pietists, the Zoharic Kabbalah, the ecstatic school of Abraham Abulafia, the teachings of Isaac Luria, and Chasidism. These schools can be categorized further based on individual masters and their disciples. Most mystical movements are deeply indebted to the writings of earlier schools, even as they add innovative interpretations and new systems of thought to the existing teachings. In contemporary Reform congregations, the observances of Kabbalat Shabbat, havdalah, and the Tu BiShvat seder derive from Kabbalistic traditions.”
These “Kabbalah scholars” literally believe that they can summon Angels and Demons in the real world and “Kabbalah” itself is just a catchall for Jewish mysticism and occultism. Do you understand? Or does citing a reformed Jewish Rabbi willing to explain publicly what Kabbalah is to any Jewish or non-Jewish person who wants to learn not suffice somehow? Kabbalah is just esoteric Jewish Occult mythology. Christian Kabbalah is just esoteric Christian mythology. There is no such thing as “academic scholarship” with a discipline that believes – seriously, honestly, and unequivocally – believes that they can summon angels and demons in real life.
You should have read the sources that I provided.
“A final observation: My working theory right now is that you for some reason thought that the Qliphoth were exclusively something from Christian Kabbalah, and that’s why you thought all these sources were about the topic. If that’s the case, I’ll graciously suggest a concession you can make: admit that the part about this being about Christian Kabbalah was off-base, and you can still keep the part about it being about the Qliphoth, since that is based on your very subjective interpretations of the themes of the story.”
Thank you for the good laugh. I wish you the best. I do not believe any further response will be useful to either of us, except perhaps to let onlooking readers laugh at the expense of both of us. Peace.
Alright, so you are still pretending that your claims don’t have to be accurate because Kabbalah isn’t real, despite me saying about a hundred times that I agree, but am just talking about the historical way these thoughts evolved, regardles of how flawed they are.
I guess I should have just used your style of arguing:
“His assumption on Kether being the goal seems to have been his own misunderstanding. Now, to be clear, Kether is the goal in some Hasidic interpretations of Kabbalah, but it is surprisingly a fairly new conceptualization compared to the other Kabbalah related material. ”
Actually, there is no such thing as any coherent interpretation of Kabbalah, so this is irrelevant.
“In some interpretations, the Tree of Death – that is, the Qliphoth – is understood to mean the World of Chaos.”
Actually, the Tree of Death is an illogical concept with a bunch of contradictory explanations, so this doesn’t matter.
Wow! Such a great style of arguing.
And wow! You ignored the main point for the fourth time! All of this spiel was based on sources that ARE NOT ABOUT CHRISTIAN KABBALAH! You cannot address this point because it is fatal for you. It’s ok, even if you don’t have the courage to admit it, I take it as a concession that you admit that you’re wrong.