The level design and story concept of Dark Souls are, famously, predicated on the dichotomy of Up and Down. In the simplest terms, what does it mean for something to be above, and something to be below? To take a quick observation from common sense: that which is below supports that which is above, and the above crowns the below. They create the conditions for each other: the lower lays the foundation for the higher, and the higher bestows prestige upon the lower. It is spirit and matter again; or word and animal. Like the two fish of the Ouroboros, they can be seen as quarreling, or as mutually devouring, but in the end they are really one thing stretched into two contrasting poles. This tension between opposites, according to Jung, creates the condition for consciousness. It may be necessary but the tension can also feel like a terrible burden.
It especially feels like a burden, if a split causes enmity between these two parts. Dark Souls is full of examples of some weight being imposed from above: a task is given, an honor, or title, or duty; and those to whom it is bequeathed are full of doubt and anxiety; they do not feel capable of holding the higher image of themselves. They shrink under threat, or buckle under weight. What exactly are the people of Lordran being saddled with? Let’s examine some bearers of curses.
Pilgrims
The pilgrims carry heavy stones on their backs as they crawl across the world, seeking Lothric, the seat of destiny. Some suggest that the stone is keeping them from sprouting into the great pilgrim butterflies, and/or sprouting into the pupae controlling the angels in the Ringed City. In either case, this transfiguration invites comparison to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar. It is as though this evolution must take place at that particular place, and until they deliver themselves there, they are loaded down by the containment of this potential.
This first figure is very telling of all the examples that follow. A divine task is ordained, implicating a promise of completion or wholeness. In this case, that completion is symbolized by the imago, the final stage of an entomorphic process. Of course the word “imago” means image. This implies that the thing that is gestating, contained throughout pain and struggle, until the appropriate time, is an image of the Self.
Manservants with Planks of Wood
This enemy, meant to be simple-minded, dumb, sensitive, carries a plank around on its back. This teaches the player, in a very oblique way: don’t count on backstabs. An enemy can be stronger than you, with great poise, and resistant to backstabs, but if their strategy is no good they do not pose a threat. So while the board is a technically a mechanical advantage for them, at the same time it is a telegraph to the player. This can be likened to having a physical advantage at the cost of a strategic disadvantage. In this way the burden may be seen as: honesty, or as transparency.
In the story, these planks they carry are likely cutting boards, as they are about the right size for corpses and covered in blood. We know that this civilization is structured around the disposal of corpses, so it makes sense that these Manservants, who carry saws and pots filled with remains, are also bringing cutting boards with them. What does it mean symbolically to be weighed down by an instrument of dismemberment? To fully understand this, we must consult with their co-workers.
Manservants with Cages
These other Manservants carry cages, which are filled with dismembered bodies and brought either to a place of interment or to Aldritch, who consumes them. One might suppose that the cages and cutting-boards were strapped to these guys by order of the Evangelists, who are clearly running the show in the Settlement. In this case the task is put to them by representatives of the church, probably in response to their neurodivergent condition. The game seems to suggest that they are unable to take up the labor of the Undead Workers, who demonstrate relatively sophisticated combat intelligence, and complexity of lifestyle. So those who cannot conform to the expected duties of society, are then assigned this more demeaning and strenuous role.
For the Evangelists who coordinate this task, treating these maligned “simple folk” as mules is probably only a practical consideration. But there is significant symbolic weight attached to these objects. By saddling someone with a corpse cutting-board, you are subliminally suggesting to them: “YOU are the corpse. YOUR back will feel the bloodstained wood.” While the cage suggests, “You are captured. You are kept. Your activity in the world has these limits.” One must remember the exceptional significance assigned to the words of elders, to what is given by a respected maternal or religious figure. Automatically, the recipient’s image of God becomes wrapped up in the exchange, and the result takes on an unquestionable authority. So when that object confers bondage upon the person, there arises feelings of guilt and inferiority.
It would be remiss to mention the cage-carrying Manservants without bringing up the Mound-Makers. This is a covenant accessed through climbing into one of these cages, after listening to the riddle of a cage-bound hollow. The entire Mound-Makers/Hodrick motif is something I’ve explored at length, but in summary it symbolizes the child’s inability to properly differentiate itself from its mother. This means that the mother image becomes conflated with the highest heights of divinity, and the lowest revulsions of horror, replete in either case with fear and awe. Because climbing into the cage triggers the revelation of this complex, we can say that the empty space within the cage, carried about by the Manservants, is quite plainly the mounting psychic pressure of an unliberated image of the Self. Each one of these cages is occupied by a phantom, who may take the appearance of a Mother, or the appearance of the witness. This is why we see both hollows carrying cages, and stuck inside them. The numinous has been compromised by the scorn of an elder.
Lycanthropes
A rule of thumb for evaluating the symbolism of Dark Souls is to note that elevation changes reflect the elaboration of an area’s theme: by going up or down, the player is moving to a new octave of the same problem. This is quite apparent in the Crucifixion Woods, which is downhill from the Settlement. Right away we find that the common enemies of these Woods rephrase the enemies of the Undead Settlement. In the Settlement we had Workers as mobs and Manservants as brutes; in the Woods we have Hunters as mobs and Lycanthropes as brutes. These two pairs complete each other’s symbolism. And since this area is downhill, and surrounded by woods, we can assume that it represents a deeper and more unconscious element.
Instead of boards or cages, Lycanthropes carry a cross. This is a straight-forward Christ reference. The mob enemies carry branches of trees as spears, which also corresponds to the lance which wounded Christ. The cross carried by the Lycanthropes also resembles the Dark Sign, the mark of humanity and the Dark Soul in the game’s lore. As in the case of the Manservants, it would appear the Lycanthrope’s burden has been given in response to their wildness; to the ferocity of their affects. The full signification of the Christian cross is well beyond the scope of this essay, but some attributes jump to the foreground in the context of this area. When we take the two figures together, we can imagine that the state of the Lycanthropes is a reflection of the Manservants’ inner experience. The contempt held for them by the Settlement society -- and the subjugating task that has been given to them -- is here phrased as an unbearable consecration. It also suggests that the workers/hunters are attempting to pin down the wild unconsciousness of the brute figures; they are trying to impose their social order on incompatible subjects, rather than finding a place for these subjects within their society. On a deeper level, it is an imposition of concept; they want to “fix” the chaotic and irrational contents of the unconscious with pins and crosses.
Profaned Priests
In the Profaned Capital there are many statues of priests struggling to hold up objects. Those objects appear to be a striking instrument (Gargoyle Hammer?) and receiving vessel (Lordvessel?). In either case, it takes many of these men to hold a single one of these items. Taken together, the objects resemble a paintbrush and inkdish. The dish is suggested to hold the “profane flame” which is never extinguished, and perhaps has some potential for rendering a new world, as in the case of the painter of Ariandel. The Capital is a land of greed and consumption, and its infamous flame is portrayed ambiguously as generative and devouring. In any case, this boundless fuel, so deeply buried, is apparently beyond the ability of its wielders to control. Were the statues holding these instruments once humans made of flesh? Or are they another reconstruction, another remembrance among this realm of stories and legends?
Ornstein and Smough
This is a boss fight from Dark Souls 1, and it does not describe a carrying of any kind, but it’s a dualistic image that will be helpful context for the next few examples. The struggle to reconcile the lower and higher principles is well illustrated by this duo. Ornstein is the leader of Gwyn's four knights, the knight who stands in for the synthesis of the group. Therefore he represents knightliness, chilvary, honor. He pays respects to Smough when he dies. Smough on the other hand, is known to be cruel and cannibalistic. He delights in his executions, and is apparently perfectly comfortable with smashing Ornstein's corpse to gain a bit of charge on his hammer. He has been rejected from the group for being unknightly, while Ornstein has been elevated as the exemplar of the group.
In this way, Ornstein and Smough are two aspects of the same knight. Perhaps Ornstein could not achieve his high degree of lightness and agility without splitting himself. Smough then is his lower nature: self-interest, desirousness, appetite, cruelty. All the "heaviness" rejected by the refined, noble, socially acceptable persona of Ornstein. Ornstein is clearly a glutton for attention (the whole lion theme), but that ego inflation would be unbecoming for his knightliness, so it is constellated by the figure of Smough. Smough therefore does not have a head (only that pathetic little mannequin thing) because he is unconscious; he has no identity of his own, he is merely a repository for Ornstein's disavowed personality traits.
If these two are the guardians of the Lord Vessel, the grail, then they are easily analogized into the two pillars of western mysticism: Joachim and Boaz. Joachim is the principle of order, of Logos, while Boaz govern chaos and Eros. Ornstein is the relatively civilized ordering principle, who engages the player with some decorum. And his suit of armor is almost mechanistic; its design would not feel out of place as a Gundam or mecha. Meanwhile, the bloated figure of Smough is curved, organic, bodily, and grotesque in its sensuality (who needs nipple detail on armor?). Again, we can assume that the only reason Smough, and the Eros principle he represents, is so oafish, is because it has been repressed. The body is seen as crude and evil in the Dark Souls world (represented by areas like the Depths and Sen’s Fortress), so poor Smough has been maligned. Cut off from the proper pantheon of Gods, he is now just a sadistic and boorish mess.
The King of the Storm
The King of the Storm swoops into the arena on a wyvern. This tableaux of Knight riding a Dragon is the definitive Souls duality, which we just examined in the pair of Ornstein & Smough. This is a more sophisticated and optimistic image of the same basic tension, because the two halves are operating as a unity. At least at first! Midway through the fight, the cosmogony of Dark Souls is recreated through metaphor: the King of the Storm strikes his wounded dragon, scattering it across the universe. This is the event of the first flame, which in its introduction of disparity has produced a field within which there are discrete atomic units. This act ambivalently channels both Ornstein’s mercy and Smough’s severity; it is as though those two attributes of the cosmogenesis were preserved independently. Was it grace or violence that brought the universe into being? It is dependent on the perspective of your station!
Anyway in this recreation (orchestrated by the Logos half, of course, with that bias implicit), the King loses his name to become the Nameless King. We are shown once again that the vitality of Heaven cannot be sustained in matter, and with that collapse comes a fracturing of spirit’s identity; a loss of prestige and a condition of disorientation.
Twin Princes
This encounter takes place at the center of the world, and so this image of the burden is startlingly direct. The lower half, Lorian, carries his twin, Lothric. The lower half is crippled, dragging himself around on his knees, with one arm as his support. Despite this, it is his role to support the weight of Lothric, who clings to his back for the second phase of the fight. Lothric too is in a wounded state, sickly and fully immobile. Their split, upper and lower, resembles Ornstein/Smough. Just as Smough can be seen as a constellation of Ornstein’s unknightliness, Lorian is a figuration of Lothric’s unprinceliness. A Prince is meant to be a point of identification and perfection for his people, and for this reason Lothric was bequeathed a holy sword. However, we are told that the prince was never able to put this sword to use, which means that he is not able to provide the appropriate reflection of the Self. His inability to wield this emblematic object seems to be related to his weakened condition. This is a telling detail when taken in conjunction with Lorian’s story: Lorian was wounded in confrontation with the Demon Prince (an ancient adversary symbolizing the shadow), and since then his sword has been suffused with the demon’s fire. The fact that these two swords (Lothric’s holy sword and Lorian’s tainted sword) can eventually be merged is further encouragement to interpret the twin princes as a bisection of a single individual. It is as though once the Prince had confronted the repressed contents of the kingdom, symbolized by the demon, he experienced a break in his psyche, unable to reconcile the divine image of the Self with its negative and destructive shadow. The fact the lower sword had absorbed the demon’s fire shows that he succeeded at least in integrating the demonic force into his mental nature. Historically, swords are symbols of discernment, of separating truth from illusion. This is a very valuable virtue, and is represented in the object ordained to Lothric by his kingdom -- but in war he glimpsed the horrific and violent potential of the sword: the intellect’s destructive power. Thus Lothric was unable to hold the high virtue of the holy sword, and only held the profane sword in the hand of his compensatory double, Lorian.
It is a fascinating parable, with much more to unpack, but what concerns us here is the fact of their piggybacking. The irreconcilability of the lighter prince and the darker prince has left them both in a weakened state, though the game tells us they are permanently bonded by curse. Perhaps it is actually the curse that separates them! They instinctively help each other, but even when they attempt to unite, they are just two sick people on top of each other, rather than one whole person. The lower prince dies repeatedly, and is brought back to life by the higher. Like the Abyss watchers, it is a continual resurrection bound by duty, subject to pain over and over in a ceaseless cycle – this is the curse of incarnation, the curse of the lower world!
Demon Princes
The Twin Princes are themselves a double, but they also form another double with the other set of twins: the Demon in Pain and the Demon From Below. As we know, it is through conflict with these demons that Lorian became crippled. The relationship between the demons is a bit different, and is helpfully illustrated by the trajectory of the fight. In either boss battle, there is a point in which one of the pair is defeated and the second phase begins. With the princes, Lorian is felled, and Lothric joins him and brings him back to life. In the case of the demons, either can be defeated, which results in the eruption of the other into a larger beast, the Demon Prince. A quiet image of compassion is what reanimates Lorian, as Lothric – despite his resigned and fatalistic attitude – holds his hands together over his brother in prayer. The demons, on the other hand, appear to be catalyzed by outrage. It is an extreme emotional outburst that characterizes the segue into the second phase of the demon fight, which stands in stark contrast to the staid ritual of the princes. Is it really the compassionate thing to bring Lorian back into his crawling body in order to continue a painful battle? Perhaps there is more sympathy between the demons. And the relative similarity between the two demons, and the fact that either demon may become the Demon Prince shows a unification of identity unseen in the princes.
The boundaries blur a little more in the lower worlds. They are typically portrayed as forgotten or ancient, which implies an older period in the development of consciousness. The demons are fluid among each other, because they share a group identity. As humans moved further into the light of self-reflection, roles and personalities became distinct – as in the “civilized” land of Lothric, with its prized sword of discernment. Apparently something has been forgotten in that movement into objective and differentiated consciousness, perhaps some sense of continuity or empathy; as we see that the high prince has an intellectual edge so keen that he has separated himself even from himself. This is echoed in the many abrupt breaks and blockages throughout the land.
In dream analysis, the presence of any twins, or any doubled figures, indicates that whatever they represent is on the verge of integration. An archetype presents itself to the dreamer as a pair of twins to indicate that it is splitting: part of it joins the conscious personality, and another part remains embedded in the depths. We see that in Lothric and Lorian (Lorian retains Demonic influence), and also in our two sets of twins (the Demons are left below, forgotten.
Statue of Gwyn and the Pygmy
There is a statue at the center of the Ringed City that depicts Lord Gwyn handing some gift to a crouching pygmy, who represents humankind. In his left hand Gwyn holds a crown. If the player falls from above onto this statue, they can snatch the treasure from Gwyn’s right hand and see that it is a Chloranthy Ring +3. Considering that Dark Souls places even its trash and rusted coins in meaningful locations, we should assume that this ring resides in this mythic tableau for a good reason. The gift that the ring bestows is stamina regeneration; in other words, endurance. This can be seen as the unique property given to humankind—it may even be a euphemism for the Dark Soul itself—the capacity to endure the tension and suffering of incarnation into the cycle of light and dark, into the world of disparity wrought by fire.
Unlike all our other examples, the burden here has not yet been given. The pygmy has not yet claimed neither the endurance ring nor the crown—it could even be speculated that these gifts are being withheld from the pygmy, or taken from him by Gwyn!!—but that’s a subject for another essay. Taking the statue at face value, the impression is that Gwyn is imparting to humans their special trait. We are also told explicitly that the Ringed City itself was imparted to humans by Gwyn – and this statue is a part of that city. So whatever it is being handed from above to below, whatever burden is being set, the history has been written from the perspective of the Above. And what about the lower world, with all its restlessness and defilement? Who is telling the story from that view?
" The demons, birthed from a common Chaos, share almost everything between them, even the pride of their prince, and his nearly-faded flame. So that the last demon standing may rekindle it."
First boss of the Ringed City DLC. The whole DLC is pretty amazing including the bosses. Not very memorable (for some reason) boss with an amazing arena. Overall pretty solid fight. Gave me some troubles, but not as much as those damn butterflies before the boss. 4 tries.
So, killing a certain demon first will give Demon Prince slightly different powers?
I guess I should kill the Demon in Pain, seeming I could probably dodge through the Demon Prince’s laser beam better than the other attack and get some free hits.
I’m tempted to try again today but I’m not in the mood and will probably go to DkS1 to level up my character a bit more.
