Twins and Religions
In light of the Phantomhive twins’ birthday celebration, this post is dedicated to them. (Yana Toboso hasn’t forgotten about them.)
Sometimes I can’t help imagining Yana T (and her staff) rummaging her table and her floor brimming with books of possible topics and references that she might incorporate into her manga. I mean, this is a mangaka who employs a Victorian era expert/consultant (author/translator/Anglophile) for her story, Rico Murakami, who released several translated books on Victorian era. Did Yana T ever consult books that concern twins and ancient and new religions for her work? Perhaps, I’m giving her much too much credit, but I’d like to think that she does a lot of research to authenticate her work and, at the same time, equalise her anachronism.
Let’s begin with the Egyptian ancient religion:
“Still, the Egyptians did not lose the sense that gods represented one divine principle. The deadly enemies Seth and Horus were perceived as brothers, twins, doublets, sometimes even as one god with two heads. The conflict between them was a violation of ma’at (the ordered, harmonious justice of the cosmos) and has to be resolved. The Egyptians were torn between two solutions. So they also considered another solution, one in which Seth seeks to restore the cosmic unity, but in all wrong ways…. Always thinking wrong, Seth tries to restore the divine union by an act of grotesque force: he attempts to sodomize the divine Horus the Younger. Horus resisting, castrates Seth and so deprives him of his power…”
And this time from the indigenous group in North America:
“Among the Iroquois the earth’s daughter bears twin sons, who quarrel within her womb. One twin is born in the normal way, but the second twin is born through his mother’s armpit, killing her. The younger son, called Flint, strives increasingly to undo the work of his constructive brother. The older son creates animals; Flint tries to imitate him, fails, and in his rage throws up rugged cliffs and mountains to divide tribe from tribe and so frustrate the unity his brother has planned for humanity. Like the Yin and Yang of Taoism, such twins or doublets are both opposite and united; beneath their conflict they seek integration and centering.”
What does it say in Christianity:
“If the ‘Good Spirit’ is not God himself, is it God’s Son? Lactantius (an early Roman theologian and an adviser to Constantine I) was inconsistent, but he sometimes thought Christ and Satan as twin angels, one beloved and the other rejected, heavenly counterparts of Cain and Abel. Although Lactantius meant this twinship of Christ and Satan metaphorically, it went further in the direction of dualism than Christian tradition could countenance.”
(All taken from Jeffrey Burton Russell’s “Prince of Darkness”) (all boldfaced and italicised words mine)
Lastly, the significance of the twins in every mythology through the Theosophical Society.
Twins in the world are like witnesses to the archetypal transition from the wholeness of the androgynous race to the duality of the separation that marked the lighting-up of Manas. They are a testimony to this, though few of them actually divide the opposing forces of higher and lower consciousness. Usually they blend the two individually as well as collectively, although there are few cases where the divine and animal natures pit themselves against each other as two separate persons inexorably linked in a desperate struggle which can only end in the death of one or the other. But this too is a reflection of the inherent potential unleashed with the awakening of self-consciousness.
When François Ozon adapted Joyce Carol Oates’ novel with his “L'amant double” about a woman and her “twin visions,” it has become a part of “twins are scary” trope. Like “Dead Ringers” before him, Ozon’s main character Chloe (Marine Vacth) began to suspect that she was in a relationship with twins having different personalities (the first one tender yet secretive, the other rough but brutally honest), the manifestation of her cats double, and the realisation in the end, which has to do with, yes, twins. (If you haven’t seen it, it’d be best not to spoil it. Though it is a fine film to explore about the complexities and the allure of Ozon’s way of filming: his choice of takes and mise-en-scènes.)
All in all, the “twins trope” have become synonymous with light/dark, yin/yang, good/bad.
Between Ciel and his older twin brother, who’s the light? Who’s the darkness?
