Author: Koi Lung Fish
Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from Final Fantasy VII (© 1997, 1998 Square Co., Ltd). Used without permission. Text © 2001, Koi Lung Fish (Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.)
Subject: A character vignette on Sephiroth and his mental/emotional state.
Isotopic, cyanotic, this great man he burns – radioactive half-life, halved and halved and halved again, dividing perpetually towards nothing yet never reaching the omega attractor, his twin self, the man of the scythe.
A great man, yes, so great it took two women to bear him, so great he had three fathers; one with needles, one with phallus, one the incompetent abortionist, locked in the chamber of unnature with fingers like knives, waiting to complete the task.
He is all man and only man; he does not know women, has known no women; he understands their anatomy only as it parts upon the blade of his sword, the sword that starts the bleeding; his other sword, the sword of his loins there to stop a certain bleeding, he does not recognise that use.
His virginity surrounds him like an eggshell, like the mother's love he does not know. Who could mother such a man? Who could love him? Who could bear his children? No woman could stand the force of such pure masculinity; is he not twin to death, that ultimate man?
(There is one woman who might mother him, one woman who might love him, one woman who might give him children; she is Audhumla, Amalthea, mother-virgin; she would mother the Planet itself, and she will die upon his sword.
Unkind trick of refraction, oh, his sword was meant for her womb.)
It seals him in, this lily-white eggshell, this pentacle; protects him, insulates him from the world of ifs and maybes. He is an unnatural man; all at once a child, a man, a dead man. His mother will break that eggshell, birthing greys into his world of black and white.
He is the monochrome man; only his eyes are of colour. They are green, green as spite, green as youth, green as a living wound to the Planet itself.
He remains half-unborn; does he not have two mothers? One has birthed his body, but the other has not yet begun her labour – she is hidden in the gravid limbo of the pregnant woman, in the lost time between maidenhead and motherhood.
(This second mother, though; she is also hag. She will birth him to destruction. She is Mama Pus, the reverse of Mother Earth; her children are stillborn, abortion and miscarriage; she is libidinous, lustful, at the mercy of her uterinal purpose; she would bury the world in her womb to stop up the permanent process of parthenogenesis.
Her womb, yes, you might spell it tomb.
She is Jenova, the Scarlet Woman, Whore of Babylon; she is Tiamat, mother of monsters; she is Angrboda and he is Jormungandr, fratricidal brother to the Midgarsorm. He is Fenrir: break his bonds and he will swallow the earth.)
He was once told he never suckled from his mother's breast; now he thinks he was born with all his teeth, and his bite drove Mama away.
His sword is almost seven feet long; behind his back, they make jokes about it. Is it a boast? a compensation? Neither; it is his symbol, masculinity in extremis, man far too much for any woman, and yet not a man at all.
Not a man? But, wait . . .
His hair tickles his heels when he walks barefoot; is it the mane of a penitent, a Stylite, a sinner repentant? or the symbol of his libido, of unheeded desire expressed in the shape of bestial hair? Look again – his hair is metal. Even the measure of his lust is as his blade. He is unmanned, castrated by his innocence.
Innocence, even in such a murderer; his half-soul is untainted by the death he is; black and white, this innocent child-man-murderer.
Isotopic, burning out by halves. He was born to die, to die young. Death does not grow old; he cannot let his sword grow dull with time, for without his sword he does not exist.
He passes through the winter court of ShinRa – where the king and queen live apart and the land is sterile; where the prince is as cold and as cruel as winter, and can only cry snowflakes; where all is oddment, all is bent towards death; the only sun in ShinRa is the golden circle of a coin – passes through like an angel made of snow. Their chill preserves him, freezes him alive, but Mother is coming, Mother who will take him in her arms. Mother Jenova, Mama Pus, the sow who eats her own farrow.
Phoenix reversed!
Her love will consume him. His birth will be his death.
Oedipal child, incestuous Sephiroth! They call him thus, but he is pure: when he cut her apart to take with him, he took her head. Her womb, her chamber of horrors, it meant nothing to him.
He lives in death – outside it he is deaf and blind. He can see only the colours of war; yellow of flame, red of blaze, blue of veins before they open: his kaleidoscope is the sanguine rainbow of human anatomy. The only noise he hears is the purr of the sword through the air, through flesh. He hears the screams only dimly; within his pentacle, they cannot penetrate.
Are they echoes of her scream? The scream of the woman who birthed him, the woman never called Mother?
He cannot hear them. He has not yet been born to sound, to colour, to anything but the blinding black-and-white light of a midwinter's cold-bright morning. Beneath the snow, oh! there is blood.
The only colour he can know is the colour of death: red, red as the womb-blood that haemorrhaged him into being.
Outside, he is death-white, death-black, death-green; inside, he is red, red, red.
Sephiroth is the name of the faces of God. Sephiroth, the spheres where the angels sing "Holy Holy" always and evermore; he is Azrael, angel of death, his unsexed masculinity forged into a blade so cold, so pure, it cuts through flesh, through bone, through soul.
Sephiroth is innocent angel, twin of death. He is all sword, omega man; his life divides perpetually upon this ultimate blade. He resides within his pentacle, unblemished, pure, waiting to be born, waiting in the very womb of Mama Pus, waiting for Mother's love.
Outside his eggshell, his caul of unbirth, he is only a sword. If you could find the line where the blade ended and the world began, you might see his soul, flickering in that quantum edge.
He is the antithesis of his abortionist. He is the omega angel, the last man, the only-man. Unborn, stillborn, isotropic, cyanotic; halving and halving and halving towards his birth, his death.
Gloriosa.
Generosa.
Sephiroth ibn Jenova.
Author's notes & addenda:
Feedback excruciatingly welcome.
Audhumla: Nordic mythology, the primordial cow who suckled Ymir with four streams of endless milk. A generative female principle.
Amalthea: Greek mythology, the primordial goat who suckled Zeus. Another generative female principle.
Scarlet Woman, Whore of Babylon: Christian, Revelations xvii-xix, the embodiment of vice and luxury. A negative female principle.
Tiamat: Akkadian/Babylonian mythology, personification of the sea and mother of both gods and monsters, often represented as a five-headed dragon. Slain by Marduk, her body was used to create the heavens. Also, Fiend of the Air in Final Fantasy I. A feminine creative-destructive archetype.
Angrboda: Nordic mythology, a giantess and the wife of Loki. Mother of Jormungandr, Fenrir and Hel. A negative female principle.
Jormungandr: Nordic mythology, a sea-serpent so huge it encircled the entire of Midgard.
Midgarsorm: Recurring enemy of the Final Fantasy series, also called Midgar Zolom. As Jormungand.
Fenrir or Fenris: Nordic mythology, a giant wolf and son of Loki and Angurboda, destined to slay Odin at Ragnarok. A symbol of destruction and unappeasable appetite.
Stylite: A class of Near Eastern penitents or ascetics, 5th-10th centuries. Mostly known for living on top of high poles.
Azrael: Islamic, the angel of death.
ibn: Arabic, lit. 'son of': ergo, 'Sephiroth son of Jenova.'
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