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Mystical & Occult Video Games
I just had a cool idea. You know how different cultures had handbooks and manuals for occult and metaphysical experiences? Things like the Tibetan and Egyptian Book of the Dead spring to mind here. Seems like these things would be great guides to create video games from. On one level, I mean just strictly the lush mythological symbolism would make a cool game. But on another level, if there’s any validity to the events described in such sources, then playing these games over and over would enable you to learn the symbolic/occult messages you need to memorize in order to persevere when you pass the threshold of death in the real world. I wonder if anybody’s really delved into this area at all - creating video games with either overtly or covertly encoded mystical signficance, designed to instill certain symbols and currents into the minds of players. I know from my own personal experiences growing up playing video games that certain of those things really did have an extraordinary influence on my developing mind. I don’t think I’d be who I am now if it wasn’t for games like Legend of Zelda, the Dragon Warrior series, or Bard’s Tale. Was there something hidden and deeper those games were actually teaching me?
October 28th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Ha! I loved the Dragon Warrior series. There was even an awesome Dragon Warrior cartoon that I caught a few times back around 1990.
I like the idea. Imagine a game where you could interpret future events by watching signs. Like, maybe a crow would caw three times before your character gets ambushed, or by reading the clouds you’d always know your next destination.
October 28th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
heh, i’ve entertained the thought before that some enlightened person should make just such a game.
It would certainly have more of a participatory element than most esoteric works, but on the downside, it wouldn’t survive peak oil/industrial meltdown…
Have you ever looked at Zelda from the viewpoint of esoterism? Searching for the lost tri-partite golden Triforce, which redeems the Dark World (Waste Land)… in the dark world, too, all people are seen in their true natures (Link was a Bunny), until you get a magic mirror or some such…
I remember one of the Gameboy Zeldas took place on an island that was just the manifested dream of a giant fish…
Dan, I bet an oracular RPG would be VERY popular. It sure is a cool idea.
October 28th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
It wouldn’t need to. It would simply be a timely device designed to teach people the mental skills TO survive the meltdown.
October 28th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
This is going to sound incredibly geeky but… I think, and have thought for some time, there is something like that encoded in the Legend of Zelda. Ganon, Zelda, and Link each represent power, wisdom, and courage, respectively. They each have a corresponding piece from the Triforce, which itself is a potent symbol–a large triangle itself a sort of phallic symbol, composed of three smaller triangles, each of which corresponds to a “virtue,” which leaves an empty space in the middle: an empty, inverted triangle, kind of a yonic symbol. Make of that symbol what you will.
Link, the hero, has the task of collecting the scattered fragments of a broken Triforce to once more unify them before Ganon can do so. All this to save Zelda (wisdom) from the captivity of Ganon (power). So even though there’s not necessarily anything “occult” going on there, there’s still a coherent mythos with a message about what happens when wisdom is yoked to unchecked power and how it takes courage to balance these archetypal forces and forge a unity out of their fragmentation.
Zelda is my favorite video game series by far, so I don’t know much about any others. It may be an exception to the rule.
October 28th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
I just realized that if you want to put a gnostic spin on it, Zelda could be a Sophia figure, Ganon a demiurge, and Link a christ figure.
October 28th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
I hate to bring up Max Headroom again, but y’all should get that. The prescience is blowing me away.
October 28th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
Sorry. I know Max Headroom isn’t a video game. But Max Headroom, his character itself, kinda is.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Great ideas! And I’m not convinced video gaming will be destroyed in the crash. Computers are getting more and more energy efficient, and people will have a lot of free time. All we need is for some part of the world to still have the resources to manufacture the hardware, and that seems likely.
Also, I think the spiritual content of Zelda is not in some kind of symbolic allegory, but in the whole aura of the game. It’s like a taste of what Mythic Reality feels like. Also, I think there’s something profound in the two types of monsters. One type (the jumping spiders for example) is just a distraction, and you can fight it forever and get nowhere, and another type, you have to fight, but only once.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
Yeah, the existence of the Legend of Zelda series definitely influenced my life somehow. It’s really the only game series I’ve actually loved. I’ve just been pretty amazed at its ability to to interweave a really classic sort of legend and all of its incarnations without ever getting boring (except for maybe that horrific triforce shard hunting deal in Wind Waker). I just love all of the mythology and layers of history that they’ve been able to accomplish with the Zelda series, making sense of the fact that a legend like that will inevitably echo throughout time, ensuring sequels without ever forcing them. I’ve always thought the Triforce was a such a great artifact, because it causes existence to reflect what is in the holder’s soul and his true nature. Admittedly, it’s a little reminiscent of the ring in LOTR, but shhh. In my opinion, it’s better.
And I’m pretty sure that The All-Seeing Eye in Tomb Raider was stolen from the Legend of Zelda series. I mean, didn’t she essentially run around adventurously, find the parts in different temples, reconnect them, alter time and have the ability to control the universe? Yeah, it was totally stolen. Not really sure where the whole “Illuminati” thing came from though…
Ah, hello Reason-to-buy-a-Gamecube…
As for what it taught me… To walk into peoples houses and take whatever I want after throwing some pots around, perhaps?
October 29th, 2005 at 12:45 am
Zelda taught me not to mess with chickens.
Yeah, I was playing the original Zelda on the Gamecube and thought about a Gnostic interpretation of the Triforce.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Back in 2000 I proposed a video game based on the Bhagavad Gita to an Indian software company, however it went nowhere. I think these ideas are out there in the collective consciousness, but since it’s a business proposition less consideration is given to it based on its religious and/or occult significance, somehow pure fantasy is found to be more marketable.
October 30th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy VII. It’s practically a mystery school for teenage nerds, if they’re paying any attention to the plot at all.
Cloud Strife, a man who has forgotten himself, sucked out of a pastoral small-town existence (Niblheim- the land of the dead) and into the world of man, a polluted, cyberpunk-ish cityscape where a rich, all-powerful, earth-destroying corporation controls everything (Midgar-from Midgard, the world of men, “middle earth). Throughout the game, the main character encounters various archetypal allies, tries to recover his memories, encounters formidable (if often bumbling) archon-esq servants of the Shinra (God’s network) corporation… and tries to save the world from having it’s lifeforce sucked out by either the corporation, or the entity Sephiroth, a supersoldier designed from alien DNA who is trying to destroy the world in his quest for apotheosis. Along the way, Sephiroth tries to convince Cloud that Cloud is merely a clone of him, that all the memories that he is regaining are merely fictions, and that he needs to join him in his quest. As far as gnosticism goes, Shinra is the Demiurge- basically an avatar of dumb, blind human growth and greed, whereas Sephiroth is more like a Thelemic Choronzon/Black Brother figure, who would try to exploit the world in order to make himself a deity.
There’s much more to it than that, I could write a whole essay explaining everything that I saw in that game, but that’s for another day… definitely one of the most memorable computer game plots I’ve ever experienced though…
October 30th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
That’s a good call about that series. I don’t think I ever played 7 myself. I think maybe it was 8 or 9 that I played through.
October 30th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
7 had much better (and more memorable) plot than 8 or 9 (I was a big fan of 8, outstanding graphics and video for it’s day, and good characterization, if the plot was weaker)… 7 was its own beast, however. I can’t say I saw anything too significant in the other games, just that one…
If you can find an old copy of it, it’s worth taking a look at (though I’m not sure if it runs on XP, you might need to try a Win98 or Win95 box)…