How do you feel about people using your art as profile icons, especially for roleplay or just wishing to use it as a icon. Is it fine as long as they credit you properly or do you wish for people NOT to use your art at all?
oh i don't mind! i would be very thankful if credit is given yes ;V;
Ok, so the new Phainon trailer gave me instense brainworms and I had to look into so much shit for this so feel free to give it a read and tell me your thoughts.
full analysis of the gnostic aspects in the new Honkai Star Rail trailer or
The Gnostic Interpretation of Phainon's Trailer ft. Anaxa:
In particular, I will be focusing on these specific shots as these are the ones that have Gnostic or more vaguely Biblical references
O1:
Anaxa and Phainon: Adam and Epinoia, The First Man and Wisdom.
I believe these scenes and very specifically, Anaxa being the one to meet Phainon in Aedes Elysiae (Paradise) is to reference the awakening of Adam, the First Man in Gnosticism.
The Apocryphon of John details that Eve is created from Afterthought / Wisdom (Epinoia) in her likeness by Yaldaboath and is the one who leads an amnesiac and sealed Adam to discover the truth of the world, a role she played when she was still inside Adam as his guide.
Specifically, she was his Erudition.
This connection is still there under her alternative name, Ennoia which is connected to Nous.
Now? What does this have to do with Anaxa and Phainon?
Anaxa is Eve / Epinoia and the one who not only sees Phainon for who he is, outside of his role as Delieverer but is also the Knowledge that guides Phainon to the truth, being one of the keys to his Origin behind both himself and Amphoreus' cyclicality.
By having Anaxa ask Phainon that question, he is effectively handing Phainon the proverbial apple that allows him to make the first step to understanding who he is. This is further pushed by the fact that it's Anaxa meeting Phainon in Aedes Elysiae which is effectively Phainon's Paradise or more accurately, it is the Garden of Eden.
Anaxa is in the Garden of Eden (Aedes Elysiae) where the First Man (Phainon) and the cycle is born and confronts him with the truth, asking him what does he want. Phainon inherently associates Anaxa with the Truth of the World, with him being Epinoia or better yet, his Eve as they are the only two and the first two in Paradise.
O2:
Crucifixion.
This one is both self-explanatory but also deeper due to Sethian Gnosticism.
Phainon is being cruxified as he ascends to his new form, almost as if he is being sacrificed or paying the price for Amphoreus' sins. You can see the pronounced cross behind him and while he lacks the T-pose, he's not far off.
However, there's another layer. It was Christ being crucificed that allowed him to reascend to his seat as an Aeon in Sethian mythos as his "death" as a human allowed him to be freed from his mortal shell that he undertook to save others from this prison, thus being freed himself.
It is a twisted way to showing that by ascending to the seat of a Lord Ravager, Phainon will be freed from his mortal shell and the cycles. Christ is also seen as an 2nd coming of Adam in some gnostic circles as well from my research.
O3:
The Tree of Life and Knowledge, the Call Back to Anaxa and Phainon and its representation in the trailer
Now, this section will be the most in-depth as it also ties back to the Anaxa is Epinoia and Phainon is Adam point.
In this shot, Phainon is walking into the new cycle with a tree splitting between the decaying old cycle and the new cycle in Aedes Elysiae (Paradise).
I believe this to represent both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, as well as its duality across Gnosticism (specifically On the Origin of the World which HSR does paraphrase in Golden Scrapegoat Mutterings and The Apocryphon of John).
OW states this —
And the tree of immortal life, as it was revealed by the will of god, is in the north of paradise to give life to the immortal saints, who will come out of the fashioned bodies of poverty in the consummation of the age. Now, the color of the tree of life is like the sun, and its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like those of the cypress, and its fruit is like clusters of white grapes. Its height rises up to heaven. And next to it is the tree of knowledge, possessing the power of god. Its glory is like the moon shining forth brilliantly, and its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like fig leaves, and its fruit is like good, delicious dates. And this tree is in the north of paradise to raise up the souls from the stupor of the demons, so they might come to the tree of life and eat its fruit and condemn. the authorities and their angels.
The highlighted parts are important to this section. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are interconnected (to the point where they are seen as one in the same in many gnostic sects.)
The Tree in the trailer is encased in the Sun, the light from Aedes Elysiae reminiscent of the Light of Heaven. It symbolises a new life (and as we have seen in the trailer, an immortal one due to this being the beginning of his 33,550,336th cycle) and considering this Phainon has Flame Reaver's mask, his own journey to show the truth of Amphoreus to the next. It also is an angiosperm tree like the fig tree shown in the excerpt, to the point of looking identical to one.
This also connects back to Anaxa again as this is not the first time we have seen a Tree of Knowledge.
It's in Anaxa's Ultimate animation and the leaves match up. On top of this, Anaxa has a connection in the sense that the Tree of Knowledge is Epinoia. According to Apocryphon of John, after Eve was created and Epinoia moved into her body, she led Adam to the Tree of Knowledge which is then revealed to also be Epinoia. Both Eve and the Tree of Knowledge are one in the same.
Anaxa himself is planting the Tree of Knowledge so he can awaken them to the Truth of their existence. In his Ultimate animation, the Tree of Knowledge originates from inside him, the same way the Epinoia originates inside Eve after it was forcibly removed from Adam (who in turn became ignorant to the truth).
Another aspect is the Moon connection that Anaxa had and how it is linked to the Tree of Knowledge.
In CN, Anaxa's E1 is called 月掩星夜的魔术师 (Magician of a Moonlit Starry Night). A characteristic the Tree of Knowledge has is that its glory (appearance) is like a moonlit night, shining down which compliments the Tree of Life being the Sun (Phainon). This is further pushed by the crescent moon imagery in Anaxa's weapon and the officially commissioned Hoyo piece of Anaxa that shows him with the Moon phrases.
(Funny tidbit, he is also green like the Tree of Life & Knowledge)
On top of that, it's repeatedly stated that both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are both North of Paradise, we can see the same for Phainon and Anaxa's scene together as Anaxa (Tree of Knowledge) walks up northside to speak to the Tree of Life (Phainon, his other half). Life needs Knowledge to work.
The Tree shot also shows the duality of the Tree of Life as it is also associated with forbidden knowledge, evil and desire.
In Apocryphon of John, it is described as this
"And I shall teach you (pl.) ' what is the mystery of their life. ' whict is the plan which they made together, ' which is the likeness of their spirit. The root of this (tree) is bitter and its branches are death, its shadow is hate ' and deception is in its leaves, ' and its blossom is the ointment of evil, ' and its fruit is death and desire is its seed. and ' it sprouts in darkness. The dwelling place of those who taste from it is Hades and the darkness is their place of rest"
These are all traits associated with Phainon's downfall which the tree leaning into the previous cycle represents. Phainon's hatred, his desire and the deception of his existence causes him to break down into Flame Reaver and work into the hands of Lygus as he becomes his perfect Lord Ravager.
Amphoreus is a prison that Phainon suffers through, his dreams and his desires cause him to feel pain when he loses them and in the end, he's stuck in the cycle which is exactly what the Tree of Life represents. It was created to ensure humanity remains in the cycle and the physical realm mandated by the Demiurge who rules over it. It is ran by hate, controlled by hate and death is a ruling motivation.
The Tree represents both new life and the destruction of life. A cypress tree represents mourning and death and a fig tree represents knowledge, fertility and enlightenment. It representd the dichotomous nature between the Phainon of the Old Cycles and the Phainon of the New and also how Life needs Knowledges to exist or else, it will decay away.
O4: Conclusion
Phew. Okay, I wrote a ton. I hope this was all coherent and a good read as well. These drove me insane all day, especially with the Anaxa scene and helped reaffirm some thoughts I had about both in the past.
phainon the fool; anaxa the magician: potential manifested
i’ve had this on the brain for at least 3 months now but i’ve been thinking about phainon and anaxa and tarot, how it mirrors their influences on each other and their own relationship and journey in the amphoreus story. similarly, you could tie the heirs to tarot quite easily, (mydei to strength, cas to death, tribbios to the high priestess etc etc) but primarily i want to talk about anaxa and phainon.
anaxa in his as i’ve written has been referred to as the hanged man very clearly. but the other thing i feel like a lot of people overlook is his role as the magician, the first of the major arcana.
phainon with his title as the chrysos heir of worldbearing and his role in delivering the new world is a clear reference to the world, but the world is simply the culmination of the fool’s journey. more under the cut bc i yapped too much.
let's start with anaxa.
first, his e1 is literally magician, isolated by stars. his other epithet, the great performer also traditionally evokes the image of a magician (or used to anyway) because prior to film being a thing, most people considered magicians to be the ultimate performers. cyrene refers to his card, the scholar by a number of titles, including the grand magician. if you also think about what used to be considered magic, alchemy was certainly one of those things. and what else is anaxa? an alchemist. the magician embodies all of these things in the imagery as well. the wands, cups, pentacles/coins, swords to represent the elements (fire, water, earth, and air, the basic elements required for alchemy) and the suits of the arcana, the infinity symbol (amphoreus), the position of his arms to say ‘as above so below’. the concept of ‘as above so below is’ is also incredibly fascinating because it ties into anaxagoras’ (the philosopher) thought and hsr anaxa echoes: everything is in everything; that we are formed of seeds (atoms) that then take the shape of what we are. on the flip side of it, it is also a declaration of anaxa’s ultimate discovery that the chrysos heirs become titans, that they take on divinity in full.
the magician represents potential, or as i like to interpret it in my own readings, possibilities. being the first major arcana means it marks the beginning of the fool's journey. all of the elements in the imagery, and the magician is the one to distill them and then bring them together. the magician is about separating all the elements and bringing them together to manifest potential. the other interesting aspect of the magician is that the magician brings together the divine and the earthly, which is again referencing something anaxa does in his own many experimentations with his own blood, with cerces, with kephale. and ultimately, anaxa manifests this potential in himself—the latent potential to become a titan. he of all the chrysos heirs is the first to achieve divinity in full—like the titans, he loses his life once he forfeits the coreflame.
the next one that everyone saw and said immediately when his as i’ve written came out was hanged man. which is so terribly anaxa in many many ways, but one of the things to remember about the hanged man is that he chooses to be there to gain new perspective. like odin who hung on yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights, sacrificed his eye for wisdom, the hanged man is there because he wishes to be. from there, he views everything differently from everyone else. anaxa who had a different view from everyone else, being called heretical and blasphemous for holding them and wanting to test his own hypotheses.
the other fun tidbit is that in aristophanes’ the clouds, socrates is depicted as hanging from a basket. there's a whole other tangent one could go into about socrates here in relation to anaxa, but suffice to say there's a number of parallels between socrates’ teachings and how anaxa appears to teach. let us not also forget that socrates was forced to suicide for his impiety (the refusal to worship the gods, same as philosopher anaxagoras) and for corrupting the youth.
subtly but also because the trailblazer is also this, the star. anaxa has been compared to the stars many times, his design elements referencing an eclipse, the stars (both in shape and the void in his chest), but also in juxtaposition with phainon’s sun and cyrene’s moon. and the star is one of the kindest cards in the tarot deck always, gently shining and offering hope, reminding you that within you there is everything you need to keep going.
with regard to phainon, the cards that would describe him best are the fool and the world. the fool and and world sit in tarot as the beginning and the end of the journey through the major arcana, two sides of the same coin, where one ends another begins, and we see this in flame reaver passing on all his memories and his will to phainon at the end of a cycle.
the fool is naive when he sets out upon this journey and traditional depictions normally have him walking toward a cliff. but he also sits outside the major arcana in a very strange way, a part and not. phainon, or khaslana, who sits within the cycles and without. he is at the start and he perpetuates the cycles, but by breaking the proverbial fourth wall and understanding that this is simply a simulation that has run over and over again, he sits outside of it, knowing the truth and trying to prevent the ending. but each cycle he starts anew without the knowledge, pushing forward into a fate he has stumbled upon. also if you’re into cards, you know the fool is also the only other card that makes it into the regular playing card deck as the joker. the joker that can be a stand in for any card, or can be a trump card.
the world is the card of completion. similarly the prophecy makes demands of phainon to bear the world and bring about era nova, thus completing the cycle so a new one can begin. imagery in the rider waite decks also feature infinity symbols (yay more amphoreus references), and a wreath (guess what phainon has ten of!) that is sometimes depicted as an ouroboros. there’s also representation of the four elements in the card, but also if you’ve been paying close attention, the wand held by the magician at the very start of the fool’s journey. if you want a jojo reference as well, ZA WARUDO is a time stop, and that’s what khaslana does. he holds the entirety of amphoreus in a loop, holding it in this slice of time so that irontomb doesn’t awaken. reversed, the world is a hollow victory, a partial success. one could argue all the cycles so far have been exactly that. a victory burned hollow by all the losses that he has to endure.
phainon is very obviously the fool (or we could argue tb is) but also with the title deliverer, the titan of worldbearing, can also be the world. the fool sets off on his journey to learn and understand the world, self-actualise and realise. upon completion, he understands his place in the world. he has gone from a fool that knew nothing to someone who has accomplished a harrowing journey, who learned resilience on fortitude, who gained knowledge and strength, learned to temper himself.
the next question then is what the role of the magician and the hanged man are on the fool’s journey? what role does the star play?
the magician is the first of the major arcana and also the first person the fool meets on his journey. the magician sets the tone for the journey by opening the fool’s eyes to the potential held by the universe and the potential within him, encouraging him to manifest it. anaxa does this for phainon as his teacher, and the (minimum of five!) years phainon spends at the grove go on to shape him and how he views the world. anaxa as a teacher is very much about teaching to think, to question, not to accept things as truth without determining it for yourself. it’s a principle anaxa applies to himself. he questions the unquestionable to draw his own conclusions, and it’s something he encourages in phainon and castorice.
the hanged man sits just after the halfway point at the 12th spot, inviting the fool to have a different perspective on things. another aspect of the hanged man that hasn’t been mentioned yet is stagnation. the hanged man is certainly there by choice, but he is also unmoving. the hanged man in a reading invites you to flip your perspective, but it is also a reminder you need to let go. it is a reminder that you have stood here long enough, that it is time to let go. letting go means falling, and falling means giving up control and bracing yourself for the hurt to come. death follows the hanged man, and death invites transformation and change. the literal depiction of this is when anaxa submits his coreflame at the vortex of genesis, where indirectly, he tells phainon to let go of him just as he himself is letting go. he has hung long enough that he has gained the clarity he needs, and finally anaxa is ready to let go and embrace death. in doing so, he imparts a final lesson to phainon as well.
and the star is hope. hope that comes after the destruction that comes from death and the tower. the reminder that despite all this, you can continue. you know what else is hope? the colour green. what is green? anaxagoras. therefore, in this essay, i will point out all the ways that anaxa is hope to phaino— (no i’m sorry that's a whole other essay) but the point stands. when phainon is at his lowest in his trailer, who is it that comes to him? anaxa. who is it that reminds him that he is his own person and can choose his fate? anaxa. who is it that tells him to believe in himself and have confidence in his choices? anaxa. i would be remiss not to mention the cycle where phainon missed anaxa so much he was imagining anaxa with him at the end when we discuss anaxa as a guiding star. after all, anaxa is reason, but where he fails to reason with phainon/flame reaver, he then becomes phainon’s reason.
anaxa is so vastly important to phainon. when he is lost and in need of direction, he goes to anaxa. from the moment phainon knows anaxa is in okhema he goes to seek his advice, before going on to the debate at the citizen's assembly where he asks anaxa if this is the right choice at all, the trailer where anaxa asks him what his dream is—anaxa has always been the one to focus his thoughts. anaxa is reason, rationalising and questioning, challenging all the established viewpoints that phainon holds.
anaxa’s message in the chrysos interview to phainon also deeply reflects the message of the magician. the magician is about the infinite possibilities of the universe, and that is what anaxa brought out in phainon. he constantly reminds phainon he has other choices and other options, that he does not have to walk the path of prophecy. that he has a choice besides carrying the world and its many burdens, that he can decide for himself. he is the only one who doesn’t refer to phainon as deliverer. but sees phainon for phainon. just another person. not a chrysos heir, not a hero. one of his students but also human and flawed in his flawlessness.
anaxa literally tells phainon to flip his perspective (very hanged man) prior to the citizen's assembly when phainon asks if aglaea was right to entrust this to him. i think anaxa’s words are something he carries for a long time, because it then becomes less about how heavy those hopes and wishes he carries are, if he should be entrusted with them at all, and more about his own determination to take those into the tomorrow their prophecy promises. when he finally vocalises his wish, it is then ‘my wish is to fulfil the wishes of others, and failing that, i will carry them to tomorrow’. it is no longer about his worthiness, it is his promise to anaxa that he will remember and carry it forward.
and finally, hope. anaxa gives phainon the confidence to step out on his own. his message to phainon ultimately is go forward in confidence. he has taught phainon all he knows despite knowing it means phainon will walk away from him and onto a completely separate path. he says as much when added to a team with phainon, even as phainon still seeks anaxa’s guidance.
another fun thing to note is that phainon has gone through all the steps in an alchemical magnum opus. nigredo (flame reaver), albedo (phainon), citrinitas (khaslana), and irontomb has been depicted in red, thus giving us rubedo once the supposed merge with irontomb happens. i would argue that anaxa has been key in all of these stages. he names the flame reaver, he teaches phainon, and ultimately his words guide khaslana’s actions. anaxa is an alchemist and a teacher, what is his magnum opus if not his students, who he has taught and shaped?
i leave you with a final thought: what is the sun but a star? what is phainon but a seed anaxa has planted, sprouted, and nurtured? anaxa keeps haunting the narrative of amphoreus and even though he's been dead for two patches now, we’ve not gone without mentioning him and he still has a role to play. ship goggles aside, his influence on phainon, in guiding and shaping phainon is undeniable. this is not to diminish the influence the other chyrsos heirs have had on phainon, but anaxa, the grand magician, the great performer, demised scholar, allowed phainon to manifest his potential.
anyways, thank you for coming to my ted talk where i yapped about anaxa the magician and the hanged man and his influence on phainon the fool and how he’s led to his journey’s completion.
alright. i know i said previously that i was working on their general relationship analysis, AND I AM! but all of this has been eating at me the entire time i've been composing it and i've been in a dilemma on whether or not to include it in the analysis or make it a whole separate thing because it's really its own other topic. and!!!! here we are. it's a whole separate thing. phainaxa is kind of crazy #tbh
this post can also be titled 'Anaxa Haunts Phainon & The Entire Narrative', and you'll see why very soon.
this post will be tagged with the proper content warning labels, of course, but please be wary that i briefly talk about anaxa and his suicidal/self-harm tendencies in one part of this.
i'm pumping all of this out BEFORE 3.5, so all information here will be things we already know.
—
Simulation name meanings
first things first, i want to go over their simulation names: neikos496 and skemma720.
starting with phainon's:
what does neikos mean? does 496 represent anything?
neikos is of greek origin, meaning discord or strife. along with that, tying in with empedocles' famous cosmogonic theory of the four elements, he was also the one who proposed the concept of that in which love and destruction would mix together and separate the elements.
and because i mention empedocles' philosophy and his concept of love and strife dividing and bringing tigether the four elements to maintain balance, i should also mention cyrene's simulation name, PhiLia093; philia, also of greek origin, meaning friendship, and is one of the four types of love in greek language—the others being éros (sexual desire), agapè, (altruism), and storgê (familial).
and we know all the eternal recurrences started with cyrene & phainon—cyrene sacrificing herself so that khaslana would be able to continuously experience the same cycle and collect the coreflames. khaslana kills cyrene during the destruction of aedes elysiae from the black tide so that she'll be able to do what she needs to to keep the cycle going, which is why she says "may this woeld never have need for a deliverer", because she's been aware this entire time, doing this since her and the original phainon put this plan into motion.
until the four millionth eternal recurrence, it is the original phainon/khaslana experiencing the loops—he had killed each loop phainon until that point. the hero within eventually begins to fail within his body, and in order to keep his plan going, he instead has the loop phainons kill him at the end of every cycle now, so that that phainon will inherit the previous coreflames he's consumed and his memories. and because he knows himself, he knows that each phainon will choose the same path as him and become "khaslana."
the number 496 is a perfect number.
phainon has been constantly praised by aglaea and some of the others as being the "perfect" chrysos heir, one without flaw.
(and he's really, truly not, if that wasn't obvious. this, too, actually ties into anaxa, his ideologies, and how he sees phainon, but that will be in my relationship analysis instead because wow. hey!!! they are kind of insane!!! what the fuck!!!)
moving onto anaxa's:
what does skemma mean? does 720 represent anything?
skhema, of greek origin, means something along the lines of form or figure, which could possibly tie into anaxa being the representation of reason and embodying erudition within the simulation.
however, skemma, of old-icelandic origin, means to (usually permanently) damage, to spoil, or to ruin. i mention this particular origin meaning because of anaxa and destruction's relationship, which i'll discuss soon.
as for if 720 represents anything, i'm not too sure.
i do, however, have one idea in mind, but it's not exactly the most obvious or sound.
in geometry, polyhedra/polyhedrons are 3D figures with all straight edges from all vertices connecting to each other. which goes along with the meaning of skhema, being form/shape/figure. 720° is the sum of all defects of any polyhedron.
and what does defect mean? a fault or flaw.
in geometry, an angular defect is the failure of some/certain angles not being able to add up to 360° or 180°.
fault, flaw, and failure, unlike 496, which is a perfect number.
anaxa who is reason and is the simulation embodiment for erudition, being a failure. whereas phainon, who is worldbearing and is the simulation embodiment for destruction, is perfect. irontomb, being a lord ravager of destruction, meant to eliminate erudition.
—
Anaxa & Destruction
now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get into the relationship between anaxa and destruction.
starting off with anaxa's past and character stories—all of his character stories are presented to us in a way that tells us that the form of media it was previously was already destroyed, forgotten, or never found.
in character story 1, cerces is flipping through his past memories before being promptly shut out by anaxa. and post 3.2, cerces is dead, having died alongside anaxa when he took the coreflame out of his chest at the very end.
in character story 2, we read the contents of a parapsychology experiment log anaxa had conducted. however, the original copy had already been destroyed.
in character story 3, we are shown a speech anaxa had improvised during a meeting between the sages of the grove. with the grove now destroyed and it being from just a simple meeting out of many, it's already been forgotten.
and finally, in character story 4, an echo in anaxa's memories had been made by him after the grove fell, but no one discovered it, so it vanished.
along with all of that, we really know nothing about anaxa aside from his ideals and personality—his backstory is never explored within the trailblaze quests, his sister is only mentioned in passing, his parents only ONCE, and his mentor, who we did see in a flashback, but has been dead pre-canon timeline. his mentor's name was also empedocles.
his parents, his sister, his mentor, and cerces, who had inhabited his body for that short time—they are all dead.
his previous home before he was able to leave to the grove was never named and was destroyed pre-canon timeline, and we witnessed the aftermath of the grove after it had fallen—both of his homes destroyed.
aside from that, anaxa had a grave that he would regularly clean and take care of, as if he was already anticipating his death.
i do not think i've ever talked about this in other posts, but i think that anaxa was definitely suicidal but not ready to actually take action to kill himself properly, instead resorting to harming himself repeatedly during his experiments, to the point where empedocles had told him to stop and never again harm himself once he had found out. anaxa had promised him he wouldn't anymore, but after empedocles had passed, that promise was soon broken.
anaxa is self-destructive and self-sacrificial—his body is littered with spells and markings from experiments. not only that, but when he had conducted his experiment to be able to see his sister one last time, we know that he carved his own left eye out as a sacrifice for the process. he also carved out his own heart as a sacrifice to make the stone tablet that would be able to guide castorice on her journey to find thanatos.
cerces themself even asks him at one point in 3.2, "why are you always trying to find ways to die? isn't it good to be alive?"
anaxa dies in Every Single eternal recurrence. not once does he survive, unlike the others who have all survived various times across multiple eternal recurrences.
not only that, but his body is eerily similar to flame reaver/khaslana's—both are void-like, cracked, and on the brink of destruction.
and he haunts the narrative without fail. he is brought up continuously in 3.4 by khaslana AND lygus. he seems to always be the last one shown when we're peering into khaslana's memories of past recurrences. his teachings still hold dear to hyacine and phainon both, even though he's been gone.
he is the only one we really know nothing about, and yet he hangs over everything like a looming shadow.
and the way anaxa not only haunts the entire narrative, but literally khaslana himself as well—looming over him, inside his thoughts and actions, consuming him. not to mention, every time worldbearing is somewhere, of course, reason is not too far behind, even in the game mechanics. same with destruction and erudition when it comes to amphoreus.
anaxa's golden boons within the divergent universe primarily have to do with Destructible Curios. which really makes me crazy, because again, he who is reason & erudition, seems to always be destroyed in one way or another, except by the one who is meant to be molded into something that destroys, and that is khaslana.
anaxa's as i've written/divergent universe art is of him depicted upside down and hanging, referencing odin in norse mythology and the hanged man tarot card (since tarot cards are cyrene's thing, especially with her connections to oronyx and time.) he is the hanged man tarot card in cyrene's deck.
what's important about that?
the story of odin in norse mythology is that he hung himself upside down from yggdrasil for nine days and nights to obtain knowledge of other worlds and to understand the runes.
before doing that, odin had sacrificed his eye into mimir's well and then pierced himself with gungnir, his spear. all of this was considered something of a ritualistic suicide.
as for what the tarot card symbolizes; the hanged man in tarot readings means ultimate sacrifice and surrender. shifting your perspective to give in to time so that things may unfold naturally—a pause in action.
and all of this fits quite well with anaxa.
his as i've written log also explains that his survival priority approaches zero. (which. what the hell. cmon anaxa stay alive for once)
because he is the first individual to uncover the truth of amphoreus, his evolution rate is stated to be extremely unreplicable. along with that, his behavior demonstrated the possible self-destructive inclinations of erudition.
—
Phainon & Erudition
moving on, with phainon & erudition, it's not as blatantly laid out like anaxa & destruction—much of phainon's connections with erudition are sourced through anaxa himself, because anaxa is Reason.
phainon's dream, before being roped into a hero because of the prophecy and destruction of aedes elysiae, was to be a scholar.
when aglaea had sent him to the grove to study, originally, he applied for a different school but admittedly got reassigned to anaxa's nousporism.
anaxa and phainon's relationship is important for a multitude of reasons, but for now, let's focus on one particular aspect of their dynamic while phainon was in the grove—anaxa and peace to phainon.
like i had just stated, phainon's dream was to be a scholar. when studying in the grove, he was able to do just that. but it's VERY important to know this while also remembering the fact that anaxa is the only one who sees him for Phainon and not the prophesied Deliverer.
anaxa is constantly addressing him as only Phainon or Phainon Of Aedes Elysiae, never hero, or worldbearer, or deliverer, etc... phainon struggles with seeing himself past the role he was forced to be and continuously thinks everyone around him really only sees him as such as well, so he doesn't try to think otherwise because he assumes this is all he is meant to be.
him being able to live his dream of being a scholar, paired with the fact that anaxa views him for Him, instilling his sense of self once more, is what gave phainon peace.
the average student takes about 4 years to complete their studies and graduate the grove, but phainon took much longer than that—up to 5 to 10 years instead.
and phainon isn't stupid by any means—he is one of, if not the most, exceptional student anaxa has ever had, stated by anaxa himself. he is extremely good at debating, has earned consecutive wreaths for it, and is a fast learner.
him taking 5 to 10 years instead of the normal 4 could very well likely be due to the fact that he did not want to leave the peace he felt while in the grove and with anaxa—he was free of weights there, able to be himself, rather than the Worldbearer.
and anaxa never did anything about it either; it's never stated that he tried to get phainon to leave back to okhema after the 4 year mark, and that is something anaxa would never do anyway.
phainon is just as important to anaxa as anaxa is to phainon. phainon is one of the few people anaxa allowed himself to be close to, and i won't dive into this too much since i think it would be a better fit for their general relationship analysis, but phainon was constantly trying to break down the barrier between them of teacher/student, whilst also trying to respect anaxa as a person he admires.
in the original cn text, phainon uses informal terms towards anaxa, and anaxa doesn't make any effort to correct him—this is because despite phainon trying so hard, he never really had to in the first place.
compared to others, when phainon addresses anaxa as Anaxa and not anaxagoras, rarely, if not ever, are there instances where anaxa corrects him, instead, letting it slide.
phainon has never had to try as hard as he thinks because anaxa was already letting him in.
he keeps anaxa's teachings dear to him, remembering them even if he graduated so long ago.
khaslana, while experiencing the loops before having to change his methods of obtaining the coreflames, never had to worry about anaxa being one he would fight with or have to kill. anaxa was willing to help him regardless, despite not being able to fully believe his words and what he would tell him.
and what's more is that, before the four millionth eternal recurrence, khaslana always killed the loop version of himself when he had to kill cyrene—anaxa, of all those loops, had never meant the phainon in any of the other loops.
but khaslana had told him that he was once his pupil, and anaxa let him in regardless. he helped him despite it all.
and we know, in the 134th loop, anaxa confronted him on his methods as well, being Reason and trying to get khaslana to turn back, because not only was he hurting the humanity he swore to protect and love, he was hurting himself too.
again, anaxa had never met phainon. but he still did all of this. and not once had khaslana try to destroy him—not even during 3.1 when they were all fighting against him. he attempted to go for the coreflame in anaxa's chest, had tried to, for once, harm anaxa because it was the only way, and yet, when anaxa instead took the coreflame of time from him, he only tried to yank back the ceremonial blade instead of killing him then and there.
and khaslana has never truly lost himself because of Reason—anaxa has always haunted him.
one who is destruction finds peace within the thing he is born to destroy.
along with all of this, phainon's BP lightcone, A Dream Scented in Wheat, is an erudition lightcone.
wheat being the symbol of aedes elysiae, his home, and it being an erudition lightcone amongst all else—yet again, the peace phainon desires.
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Conclusion
dude i'm gonna be honest. i actually have no idea how to finish this off, but do you see it all now. how fucking crazy they are. how utterly intertwined they are.
they're quite literally programmed to go together in one way or another—within amphoreus, destruction & erudition are always hand in hand some way, somehow, like worldbearing & reason.
and them also having SO MANY references and callbacks to kevin & su. a bit crazy!
considering phainon, cyrene, & anaxa are the only ones amongst the heirs that have multiple callbacks to kevin, elysia, and su, respectively, it was bound to be this complex.
i'd really like to talk about phainon being the sun, cyrene the moon, and anaxa being the stars, along with the anaxa-march connections but. again, i feel like that's a whole new topic for a separate post (<- guy who says this and she's going to take 6000 years to finish it), and i still haven't even finished my phainaxa relationship analysis.
OKAY..... ANYWAYS. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR.... IF YOU DID..... #PHAINAXA4EVER
been following ur sheith art since the show ended… finally got to buy smth (gloryhole au) cause i’m on disability. happy to spend my governments money on ur porn.
this is the sweetest thing someone's ever said to me
thank you, i hope you're having a good day today ;n; ♥
