a moderately (in)coherent essay on loyalty and divinity and covenants of salt in the locked tomb
we can all agree that salt is very very central to the locked tomb. probably i should have some kind of actual thesis statement but i've never been very good at coming up with those and this post is also a direct continuation and progression of conclusions ive come to over the last two hours which are scattered through several other as yet unsent posts. so. all im saying is that im pretty sure im onto something here so please please bear with me
wait ok. ive come up with working thesis statement: the motifs of loyalty, promises, life/selfhood, and salt in the locked tomb - and their biblical connections - all line up to say, pretty clearly, Alecto Is God And John Is The Adversary.
i. introduction and context
ok so. a lot of this is about covenants of salt, which were a Big Thing for a very long time, until . salt is vital to life. abrahamic G-d's covenants to his chosen people that they are his Chosen People are covenants of salt, which is The promise ever. here's a little bit about covenants of salt because it is VERY IMPORTANT you know this context (source wikipedia):
A covenant of salt was a cultural practice in the ancient world in which one party would form a covenant by eating the salt of the other. Usually the party with the greater power or authority provided the salt. Salt was seen as extremely vital for life, so much so that among many cultures, it was thought to be the vital substance in the blood itself that made things alive. Thus, eating someone else's salt was seen as equally significant to drinking their blood, a variation of the idea of blood brothers, in which two people are thought to symbolically share in a common source of life by exchanging blood, as if the two lives had become one. The two parties involved in the covenant were bound by this sacred rite to be loyal to each other for life, ensuring that they do not harm one another, and look out for the other's interests.
also: because of the scarcity and vitality of salt and the labour-intensive efforts its production required until VERY recently, covenants of salt are the most holy and solemn of promises that at once represent preservation and (eternal) life and power
ii. alecto and john's covenant.
the abrahamic G-d, in point of fact, makes two convenants of salt - one to his priests and one to the line of kings descended of david. we'll get to the priests later.
alecto, the salt-thing, is being used as a battery to fuel john's eternal life and is the source of his enormous power, which is centred around the preservation of life through manipulating undeath.
quite literally, alecto made a covenant of salt with john - she chose him, and gave him the power - gave him her salt - for which in return he was supposed to enact her divine will. and instead, john broke with her, killed her and ate her and made himself god.
iii. jod and the Adversary play who's-who
john has made himself out to be god, and alecto the devil. in harrow's canaan river-bubble, teacher's ghost says that "even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck". post-resurrection, john is the sole holder of this knowledge. if alecto is to be labeled the devil by anyone except john, then it is because he named her such first.
so, sure. john is god and alecto is the devil. except that alecto is the source and uttermost representation of the power and the life and the preservation. alecto is the one who gives the salt, not the other way around. in the abrahamic monotheism which canon is both textually and subtextually based in, there is and only can be one true god; and to break from god is a terrible thing. the salt-thing gave herself to her chosen and asked him to save her, and instead he broke with her and buried her and styled himself the man who became god and took the mantle of her divinity for himself.
so if alecto isn't actually the devil and john isn't actually god, this means that Hell With All Its Hungry Gaping Mouths at the bottom of the River, which by the way connects to the saltwater pool in alecto's tomb, might not actually be capital-H HELL. which means that the place that the stomata lead to is somewhere else. which means that hell is somewhere else too.
Hell classically has nine circles. just saying. nine is an important number, after all. and, classically, the ninth and innermost circle of hell is the circle of treachery, where the worst of the worst (being traitors) end up. just saying. for no reason at all.
iv. the nine houses are hell and the ninth house is the circle of treachery: an extended metaphor.
silas octakiseron calls the cult of the tomb a blasphemy. the worst criminals in the nine houses are imprisoned on the ninth. gideon spends the first eighteen years of her life being punished, because, for this metaphor, she is not of the ninth - not a native, so not a demon or clergyperson of the devil - she is beholden to it. she has come to the ninth from the outside, and, metatextually/thematically, she is a tortured soul on the ninth, the worst of the worst, the dross (incidentally a word both used by crux to describe gideon and john to describe the things including the RBs that they dispose of in the mouth of hell) because her very existence was conceived in an attempt to commit the most blatant blasphemy of all against jod. it's pluto, which is fuckass nowhere; it's freezing, it's almost unlivable, and it stagnates. there's a pretty solid case to be made here for the houses being hell and the ninth being the ninth circle.
and alecto, the 'devil', is at the centre of it all. classically, or at least in dante's inferno, the ninth circle where lucifer THE ADVERSARY resides is a large frozen lake. all the worst sinners, the blasphemers, the traitors, those who have broken covenants of salt to their lords and to their god, they are encapsulated in ice. classically, those who have broken covenants and betrayed god are trapped in this place. on the ninth house, the reason for its existence, the thing around which all else in hell was formed, the betrayed salt-thing is entombed alive in ice. because of the reversal of roles and john's assumption of alecto's godhood, it is instead the person whose covenant of salt has been broken - the person who has been betrayed - that is imprisoned here, trapped in the centre of hell in the adversary's place while he is in hers.
v. harrowhark nonagesimus and the covenants of salt
if john is god and alecto is the adversary, then harrow is the devil's #1 worshipper. she is everything silas despised and feared and about a million times more again, because not only is she head of her devil worship cult, not only is she in love with the death of jod to the point where it drives her to become immortal, but she opened the fucking tomb. BUT if john and alecto's positions are reversed, then this means harrow and all from whom she is descended are those rare rare few who remained faithful and loyal to the one true g-d amidst idolatry.
harrow is the culmination of the line of Tomb-Keepers who dedicated their everything to the fervent worship of The Body - they are the priests with which god makes a covenant of salt. harrow's loyalty is to her god, not her jod - harrow's loyalty is to Alecto. over and over again, harrow has been bathed in salt and made promises in salt. harrow, alecto's most devoted priest since anastasia, is the mish-mash of her own soul and that of the child of god's other chosen, the king who broke with alecto and betrayed her and uses her. harrow is the amalgamation of both alecto's covenants of salt and she is devoted to her utterly, and she is rewarded for it. and alecto is going show the universe exactly what being the faithful chosen one of god means.
[nael, aged 6 voice] the salt-thing, she destroyed her cage. she is free.
salt preserves. just as alecto is ended by the breaking of a covenant of salt, she is brought back by the enforcement and renewal of both her covenants through harrow.
all throughout htn, alecto has slowly but surely been thawing. salt melts ice; the salt-promise of god is destroying the encapsulating ice of her adversary. a covenant of salt was never to be broken, and the salt-thing was betrayed by the man who became god and the god who became man. and harrowhark's god is a vengeful god, and honey, there is a big flood coming
