The Wicked Powers Theories
I had a few asks about what the wicked powers could actually be… so I came back to the Shadowhunter children’s rhyme and tried to see what I can learn from it.
This theory is a bit complex and has a lot of biblical references and the final conclusion is in the very end… so bear with me!
Bronze is not a regular color, in a way that its meaning isn’t obvious like a lot of the other colors do. So I figured its meaning had to have a special part in understanding TWP.
I dug down the regular channels and found rather basic interpretations that didn’t say much. Then I came across a meaning that said it means the judgment of Sins and testing by Fire. I studied each interpretation separately and combined them:
Bronze is mentioned quite a lot in the bible, specifically in the last chapter of Jeremiah where there’s an entire paragraph that’s describing bronze paraphernalia from Solomon’s temple, of which every detail was mandated by God himself.
If we take this temple as an example, all of the holy objects were made out of gold (which is symbolic of God’s kingship, glory, and holiness), and were kept inside the temple. Everything outside the temple was made out of bronze. Almost like the bronze is a sort of a stepping stone into the place of God, into the divine. The division is clear.
What lies outside of the temple? The altar, on which animals were sacrificed to atone for our sins (go vegan), and the enormous “Brazen Sea” which was a large bronze basin of pure water, to cleanse and purify. So the place where you atone for your sins, where the blood is spilled, as well as the place where you wash them away, is all made from bronze.
It seems as bronze is where God’s judgment deals with sin, and only then can a person enter the temple, and by context - the pure and holy presence of God.
Bronze is also the material of which Moses made The Bronze Serpent, which God told Moses to make so that the people who saw it would be protected from dying from the bites of the “fiery serpents”, which God had sent to punish them for speaking against him and Moses. Again, judgment for sins.
You can also say a big motive here is the suffering. Both examples point at the pain one must go through to be redeemed - which is a Christian motive, if not a Jewish one (though I say the animal suffering is not something to be dismissed) - but TSC is based much more on Christianity than on anything else.
2. Tested by fire - this is rather short. Metals such as bronze and gold can withstand fire. Fire means a deep purification. Water washes the surface, but fire cleanses through and through.
Now, the phrase said, “Bronze to summon wicked powers”.
This is pretty significant to me. It’s an action, something one must do in order to obtain these powers.
So if bronze is what you must do, does it mean you have to call god’s judgment? Or rather, the angel? Do you have to sacrifice something or someone? Do you have to prove you’re “tested by fire”, or rather, “purified”, in order to obtain these powers?
Secondly, If you must summon them, that must mean they don’t already exist here. There are many assumptions that Kit or Ash are the wicked powers… but that phrasing doesn’t sit well with that theory. And besides, their powers are not wicked, they just are.
Another question is - when you summon those powers, where do they go? Are they contained in an object like the bronze serpent? Do they go to a person? Perhaps the one who summoned them? And if so, does the bearer of the powers even matter? For example, if it’s someone like Ash, who was already used as a vessel for dark powers, who’s blood is unique - does it magnify or change the power?
But this whole thing bothers me in the most basic of ways - it all screams Devine, but if so, why are the powers wicked?
We all know the word summoning has two sides - good and bad. But powers are not so black and white. Powers are just powers, it’s the person who bares them that decides if they’re used to do good or bad.
So maybe the powers are not wicked themselves, but they’re called so because of how they’re obtained. Wicked isn’t necessarily evil, it’s more like immoral. Maybe in order to obtain those “Wicked Powers”, you have to commit something just as wicked, as immoral as their name.
“And bronze to summon wicked powers” is the last phrase of the poem. The last option, the last resort.
“Being the final series installment, Cassie has plans for all the characters who are still around to face the greatest threat they’ve ever faced, and the characters from different generations of the Shadowhunter Chronicles will have to unite and join forces in the biggest battle they’ll ever have to take it down, and that something will happen that will change the nature of Shadowhunters and what they mean. She has also stated that “It will bring the Shadowhunter Chronicles to an end. The Shadowhunter world will change forever.”
I’ve always thought it’d be a sort of apocalypse scenario, because of this description. This screams sacrifice for me, and a sacrifice on a much greater scale than what we’ve faced before - which is a personal sacrifice. I think it would have to be a collective decision, something all must pay. And if the Shadowhunters world will change forever, does that mean there will be a shadowhunters world? Will there even be shadowhunters left? Not in a sense of mass death, but of powers? What if the sacrifice, the one that so clearly screams blood, is not life, but their angelic blood?
This is so complicated, and while I do have many thoughts about more specific scenarios, I figured I should start with this, and hear what all of you make of it!
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