Dark Yugi and his monsters are in a tight spot. One last hit and he's done for. Grasping at the edge of victory, the enemy commands their monster to launch its final attack!…only to realize that their monster isn't actually attacking?!
As the magic circle with its blood-red runes materializes around the paralyzed monster, Dark Yugi reveals his ace-in-the-hole…
Beware the "Binding Hexagram Curse"!
This is an absolute classic of a card, originating in chapter 75, "The Cards Bare Their Teeth"- the same story that the iconic Magic Card "Magical Silk Hats" debuted in!
Now, you'll notice that I show two different variants of this card here. The primary one, featuring a hexagram in the center of the magic circle, is how this card appears in the original Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump run of Yu-Gi-Oh! and the tankobons released alongside it, as well as all English language versions of the original series. My version is, sadly, a recreation of what this original illustration might have looked like in modern color.
The version you see on the right in the second image, "Binding Circle Curse", is the normal way this card appears in the 2016 color bunkbon release of Yu-Gi-Oh!. It stands on its own, but also became the basis for my classic-style recreation as well.
I'm sure there are people out there who may be surprised to see this original version of the card. The hexagram is a symbol with a very, VERY long history behind it, and some of the associations it gained during that time are stronger than others.
I understand if some readers may have a few reservations about seeing a historical symbol on a card like this. As such, I'll briefly go over my understanding of this symbol and why author Kazuki Takahashi may have used it, under the cut.
For now, please allow me to speak on my card creation process.
Let's start with the name. I admit, I handled it in a slightly unusual manner. I understand that a typical reading of this card's Japanese name, 「六芒星の呪縛」, would yield a phrase like "Curse of the Hexagram" or "Cursed Hexagram".
However, to my knowledge the use of 呪 and 縛 together denotes a specific kind of spell or curse that stops something from moving. This is a very notable aspect of the card- it's always shown to stop an enemy monster from attacking when it's used. So I felt that the fact that this is specifically a 'binding curse' needed to be represented in the title of the card.
In fact, this is likely why Konami international decided to call their version of the card "Spellbinding Circle". It's a pretty decent attempt at getting that aspect across, I think!
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work. As a word, 'spellbinding' means something like 'to be fascinated by', or 'to have your attention fully captured by something'. It doesn't mean that you're literally paralyzed by a spell. I appreciate their attempt to be evocative here, but sadly: no dice.
I also decided to change the order of the name for clarity purposes. Again, a common arrangement of 「六芒星の呪縛」 could be something like "Binding Curse of the Hexagram", a title that's far too long to fit comfortably onto the top of a card.
So I thought to myself: what's the real subject of the card here? Is it the hexagram depicted on the card, or the curse the card bestows upon an enemy monster? I decided that, while the hexagram is a vital visual element of the card, the curse itself is what matters most. In the manga, when a monster is affected by this card, the visual of the magic circle surrounds it, but the binding effect is tied to the curse itself. Thus, I decided that 'binding' and 'hexagram' are both properties that the 'curse' the card is named after has.
So that's why I rendered this card's name as "Binding Hexagram Curse" or "Binding Circle Curse".
This card was one of the few cards to have a known colorscheme from the original serialization of Yu-Gi-Oh! in Weekly Shonen Jump. In fact, it's the only Trap Card with this honor!
That's right: no other Trap Card was ever seen in color back when the manga was first coming out!
Panel excerpt from the color title page for chapter 95, "Terror of the Dungeon".
The previous image is partially cut off by a logo, but there's a bit of art underneath that. The above image is from a lower-quality source, but here the covered parts are clear.
It's surprisingly colorful for such a simply-designed card, isn't it? My favorite part of the color version is the fact that Takahashi slipped a little easter egg in the glyphs here; there's an 'M' and a 'W' at the top of this art, referring to the manga's Magic & Wizards card game name!
Stay with me: under the cut, we'll go over my changes to the card's text, and I'll briefly talk about the hexagram as a symbol as well.
About the card text. In Japan, it's 「このカードに攻撃を加えた者ば六芒星の呪いを受ける」; from what I can tell, the original text on this card might read something like "Whosoever attacks this card shall be cursed by the hexagram".
In a vacuum, I like it! Very evocative and flavorful. But it doesn't really tell us how the card works from a game-centric perspective.
My goal, of course, is to make a game-functional card, so I disregarded that and derived my card's text from what this card is shown to do on-panel. In every appearance starting from chapter 72, it:
-stops an attack from occurring
-makes it so that the monster that attempted to attack is no longer able to attack
-disallows the player controlling that card from moving it
-and lowers the attacking monster's ATK value by 700 points.
Then there's the matter of how this card is triggered.
Throughout the Duelist Kingdom arc, it's very clear that for this card to work, the opponent has to 'declare an attack on this card', as seen in chapters 72 and 82- or, at least, launch an attack in this card's direction, as we see in chapter 126.
But this aspect changes in the Battle City arc. Come "Binding Hexgram Curse"'s appearances in chapters 174 and 260 from the Battle City arc, it's now able to trigger whenever the opponent declares an attack on a monster a player controls.
There are a few other cases of cards that are slightly different between appearances (look at how Exodia works in Death-T vs. Battle City, for instance), and in cases like that I always go with the way the card functioned in its most recent appearance.
With the rest of the card accounted for, I'll spend a little time talking about my understanding of why Kazuki Takahashi adopted use of a hexagram for his cards.
I'll be upfront: this won't be a thorough historical accounting of the hexagram and every meaning the symbol took on over the course of its history. My humble aim is solely to determine the possible reasons why the author decided to include it in his story.
At its roots, the hexagram is a simple shape, commonly composed of two overlapping triangles. Due to this factor, it's understood that it showed up in the records (or what we have of them, at least) of lots of early civilizations all over the world, but not for any special reason; the symbol was simply something that may have been easy for early people to create and replicate.
But I'll start, as many do, at what is called the cradle of civilization: ancient Mesopotamia. The hexagram is said to have been first used in this area, likely for early astrology practices ('astrology' in this case meaning an old proto-religion involving worshiping the stars and celestial bodies, which eventually evolved into more formal religions and/or cults of the area as we know them).
Turning our attention to a neighboring area, the hexagram also arose as a noteworthy symbol in what is now India, as well. The most relevant version of it is probably a concept seen in certain traditions of Hindu: the Shatkona, which from there may have spread around Asia over the next 1000 or so years.
My understanding of the topic is fuzzy, but I gather that some portion of the usages of the six-pointed star in many parts of Asia roots to the Shatkona.
To narrow my focus once again, I'd like to bring the topic to Japan, and through it Korea and Shintoism/Buddhsim. The Kagome mon, a similar six-pointed star (though it has also been an eight-pointed star) is said to have been a symbol of the Hata clan (themselves likely originating in Korea); they had a wide influence in a formative time in Japan's history, and may have been key figures in the construction of many Shinto/Buddhist shrines and temples, such as the Fushimi Inari-taisha. The six-pointed star symbol is a motif common to shrines/temples that date to the time period in which the Hata clan had influence. So the presence of hexagrams of some kind in Japan could be said to date to anywhere between roughly the 1st and 6th centuries.
(As I said, my knowledge regarding that era of Japanese/Asain history is pretty fuzzy, so if anyone has more knowledge about that time period and the symbols that arose during that time, please contact me!)
To refocus.
That's all to say that the hexagram, be it through comparatively local cultures or otherwise, would have been a familiar symbol to anyone living in Japan in the 20th century. It's easily possible Yu-Gi-Oh! author Kazuki Takahashi grew up with at least a vague familiarity with it.
As I've said before, though, I think the real influence here is Group SNE. Takahashi was a noted fan of their works, such as Record of Lodoss War and Sword World RPG, and was, as I said in my post on "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual", likely very aware of their late '90s card game, Monster Collection.
To reiterate, a hexagram is one of the most prominent symbols associated with that game:
An example of the Monster Collection card back. Image sourced from the Monster Collection TCG wiki.
Frame from an early commercial for the Monster Collection Trading Card Game. Taken from Touya/LostWorld's coverage of Monster Collection, as seen in this video.
It's very possible that Takahashi was a fan of this game and simply adopted the symbol for his own. After all, he likely viewed it as a generic symbol with a vague connection to the occult and magical practices, especially given his research on Egyptology and the life of Aleister Crowley.
And use it he did. Though "Binding Hexagram Curse" was the first place it appeared, he soon used it in other cards like "Trap Displacement", "Magic-Negating Barrier", "Chaos: Black Magic Ritual", "Black Magician Girl", "Devil's Sanctuary", "Magician's Circle", "Magician's Cross", and so much more.
Of course, most are aware that the symbol has, in the past about 5-600 years or so, become a symbol associated with Judaism. I cannot personally speak to the grander conversations regarding its history there; I leave that to those who are far more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
As far as I can tell, though, Takahashi's usage of the hexagram has nothing to do with that particular branch of the symbol's evolution. So it's a shame that Konami and Shueisha have taken to removing or censoring the symbol from wherever it originally was.
But hey: so it goes. Ultimately, even if the original version of this card is never seen again, I'm glad Takahashi got the chance to use it in his story as an effective means for drama in the way he did.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this post informative. My next post will be focused on what is perhaps this project's most important card! 'Til then!
