Lesser and Greater Wills to Power
A cursory review of power and Nature as represented by FromSoftware's titles
What is it that ties the titles directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki together, thematically?
The best answer, I think, is power, within the context of a cycle or order.
Each game, from Demon’s Souls to Elden Ring, asks a set of questions unfolding from this theme: who (or what) has the power? how is that power being wielded? and what is the “natural” order of things, as set against an institutional, or “artificial”, order?
Because I’m not convinced that we have a proper definition of the artificial, I’m using quotation marks around certain words here. How, precisely, is the cellphone any more artificial than the stirrup? We still largely operate on an essentially religious notion of Nature as a foundation intolerant of anything surpassing a certain threshold of evolution. A similar bias informs our conceptualizations of the natural vs. the super-natural. When does one become the other?
Elden Ring is especially intent on communicating ideas about how the attempt to institute a different order leads, in part, to a revenge of the unconscious. The YouTube channel-collective Hawkshaw identifies Elden Ring’s symbol of the unconscious as the snake, or serpent. With the overriding of Death’s functioning and the subsequent damming of libidinal productivity, the land and all the life within it degrades. Was the problem here not evolution per se but a mismanaged vision?
The thing is that not one of these titles offers an unambiguous vision of a functional, evolutionary transcendence of a “natural” cycle or order; nor is it ever stated that any one ideological or religious faction perceives reality more accurately than another. The fact that the revolting Shabriri “Grapes” are so similar in appearance to the most noble Rune is one of many details suggesting that factional divisions only serve competing narratives — not any objective truth (and that the most Holy may also be, after all, the most Abyssal).
In one of Dark Souls 2’s endings, it is suggested that our avatar will (or will attempt to) go “[beyond] the scope of light, beyond the reach of Dark” — but it remains a particular characteristic of Dark Souls 2 that little can be ascertained from this detail, aside from the potential existence of a kind of Middle Way. And, of course, we are never actually shown here what this Middle Way might look like. “There is no path.” Another half-tantalizing vacuity, I think.
Could Miyazaki’s vision could be characterized as conservative — as traditionalist? I mean conservative not in the way in which it is typically wielded now in the Left vs. Right dialectic, but in the sense that Miyazaki’s works appear to stem from that tension of the “natural” in frictional relation to the “artificial”, and that these works show all attempts by the latter to gain control of the former ending badly. Miyazaki seems to be expressing more than merely the idea that civilization is always founded on a fundamental uncertainty, or in spite of a death-hungry Nature.
The entry of humanity onto the scene in Dark Souls’ origin myth is the entry of activity against inactivity, as represented by the gray landscape of everlasting dragons and archtrees, which is entirely unconcerned with evolution. But, as the narrative of the Dark Souls series plays out, the attempt to maintain an age of humanity turns into a forever-diminishing battle against some entropic principle, or the shift to a new aeon. In Bloodborne, all of the institutional corruption aside, it really looks like there is no controllable or safe way to achieve contact with the numinous or develop one’s scope of consciousness. It is only a greater absurdity, an unimaginable chaos and resultant psychosis, which awaits the psychonaut.
The closest we get to an image of functional transcendence is probably the dragon acolytes in Dark Souls 3’s archdragon peak. If this is indeed a Middle Way, it seems to be more of an escape than an evolution. And an escape to where? To nothingness? Against unwinnable odds, is the only option self-petrification? The Path of the Dragon may also be read as deeply regressive, for the acolytes abandon their humanity in favor of something resembling a most ancient form. Dark Souls 3 does give us other instances of apparent developments within the scope of what can loosely be called humanity, but all of these seem distinctly monstrous, even psychically automatic, such as the Angels or Pilgrim Butterflies. None possess a civilizing impulse, and their names are perverse mockeries of beautiful lifeforms.
Again: we’re not ever given a picture of a fully functional transcendence or an equilibrium between the “natural” and the “artificial” allowing for such transcendence. Everything descends into the rigidity of authoritarian dogma, the primal slime of nihilism, or the ruined dimness following divine retribution. Perhaps it is not a question of what sort of civilizational evolution Miyazaki regards as sound, but rather if he believes in the idea of such an evolution at all.
The closest thing we have to a truth in any of these titles is the notion of an ontological order which cannot be forcibly evolved beyond. Any such attempt will be rendered as a transgression. Here, the Promethean act is simply a temporary staying of the inevitable dark; or, is it that Nature (if we are to distinguish the self from nature proper) is in some way opposed to self-conscious evolution? What can liberation be in any of these worlds, if the will to power inevitably invites corruption or punishment?
Given all of these considerations, the presence of a force or principle in Elden Ring identified as the “Greater Will” — a force or principle forming a top-down relationship with humanity — is an interesting detail to ponder. Could the “Greater Will” be Nature? an astral force? the closest approximation of God? The description for the Nox Mirrorhelm states that it was worn “by those committed to high treason, [and] wards off the intervention of the Greater Will and its vassal Fingers.” We find the helm among the realm of Nokron, Eternal City, resonant with the also-subterranean Profaned Capital of Dark Souls 3, and “banished deep underground” upon a series of transgressions.
Transgressions according to whom, or to what, though? What is the sin, exactly? and what is the moral code it stands against? Although we encounter various representatives of this Greater Will, such as the Elden Beast, its aim (to say nothing of its provenance) remains fairly inscrutable — and contentious. In the description for the Seedbed Curse, we read that it “prevents dead souls returning to the Erdtree, leaving them forever cursed.” The implication of the existence of something as dramatic and hideous as the Seedbed Curse is the resentment of a symbiosis so deep that it turns mutilative. A matter of principle? or is sovereignty being hindered?
It could be that all of this comes back to said (dis)equilibrium — and that the yet-unidentified sin is the presumption that with sovereignty comes a dissociation from the cosmic organism. Perhaps the fateful mistake of Gwyn, masculinely eager to inflame and erect, was over-identifying with the aspect of fire, fearful and resentful as he was of the Dark, and so embedded that imbalance into humanity’s trajectory. I’m reminded of a passage from P. D. Ouspensky’s book, In Search of the Miraculous, which distills one talk given by Gurdjieff thusly:
…humanity, or more correctly, organic life on earth, is acted upon simultaneously by influences proceeding from various sources and different worlds: influences from the planets, influences from the moon, influences from the sun, influences from the stars. All these influences act simultaneously; one influence predominates at one moment and another influence at another moment. And for man there is a certain possibility of making a choice of influences; in other words, of passing from one influence to another.
“To explain how, would need a very long talk,” said G. “So we will talk about this some other time. At this moment, I want you to understand one thing: it is impossible to become free from one influence without becoming subject to another. The whole thing, all work on oneself, consists in choosing the influence to which you wish to subject yourself to, and actually falling under this influnece. And for this it is necessary to know beforehand which influence is the more profitable.”
The self-governance denoted by sovereignty can never be a total escape from larger and higher forces, but a “choice of influences” — a continual, well-informed balancing act. Intuitively, we grasp the wrongness of the Seedbed Curse and its applicator, the Dung Eater, because of its grotesque proximity to suicide. And while it’s difficult to make a comparable judgment of the Nox, a couple of apocrypha — the “Lord of Night” and “lost black moon” — suggest a potential similarity to the Belial group of black magicians associated with Atlantis’ downfall, as described by Edgar Cayce. But, those reservations about the Path of the Dragon being noted, Archdragon Peak remains the only location among these titles where the sun and moon are always simultaneously visible: a symbol of psychical integration.
These are just a few starting points for a further topical exploration of power — its wielders, purposes, and applications — as it pertains to these works.