From THE WISDOM OF DREAMS: Science, Synchronicity and the Language of the Soul by Greg Mahr M.D.& Chris Drake Ph.D. (Routledge) The ouroboros and the chemical structure of the benzene ring. Dream solutions often have archetypal elements. Kekulé did not dream of a carbon ring; he dreamt of a snake devouring its own tail. That image is an ancient symbol of life and rebirth, known as the ouroboros, first seen in ancient Egyptian art, then Greek art and eventually in alchemy and Gnosticism. Mr. Hyde is a brilliant depiction of our Shadow, the dark side of ourselves that Jung explicated.
I apologize for the late post but studying for Finals and doing said finals has been keeping me unfortunately busy. But enough excuses, let’s get into it.
While it’s definitely been used less than it’s Greek counterpart, Egyptian mythology and ancient Egypt in general has been shown to be an inspiration for things in Tears of Themis. The most notable example of this being the Secrets of the Tomb and Mysteries of the Lost Gold events.
Marius is the character that has been shown the most with Egyptian influences. In fact in one of his earliest cards, Dream of Thebes card, he is linked to pharaohs. Not surprising since pharaohs are one of the more powerful images of kings. There is also the ouroboros symbol that appears quite a bit with him. Ouroboros is a symbol that has been used all over the world, including Egypt. While I haven’t actually been able to track down where it originated from, ancient Egypt is certainly a popular theory.
Ouroboros are typically interpreted as a symbol of eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and renewal. This fits in perfectly with the Egyptian mythos. Cycles, renewal, and all that jazz are a huge part of Egyptian mythology. According to the Egyptian mythos, the sun (Ra) was constantly on the move. Throughout the day he traversed his way across the sky. Come night he descended into Duat, the Egyptian realm of the dead. Every night, while in Duat, he had to fight the personification of evil, a giant snake known as Apophis. At the end of the night Ra would emerge from Duat victorious to once again traverse the sky, so sort of an eternal cycle if you will. Marius has been linked to snakes several times which does seem kind of ominous since snakes are often depicted as evil. Apophis is a very good example of an evil snake. His job was to literally devour the sun and end the world. But, like many things, the villainy of snakes depends on where you are from a cultural standpoint. Snakes aren’t all bad in Egyptian mythology. Interestingly, Ra’s sun barge which he rode in was pulled by snakes. It could be interesting if the connection between Marius and snakes is pointing to a duality. Sometimes he’s good, sometimes he’s not. Of course that’s merely a theory largely based on the link between Egypt and Marius formed in the Dream of Thebes card. There is, of course, also his Secrets of the Tomb card but I don’t really want to analyze it or any of the other cards from that event since it hasn’t been released yet. That said, I look forward to when it is released to see how it makes use of Egyptian mythology, assuming it does.
Finally, there’s the Mysteries of the Lost Gold event. Egyptian Mythology seemed to be largely used as a basis for the religion found there which is interesting. One would think Mihoyo would have used more of Greek mythology since the name of the game already borrows from that mythos. I for one am very interested about whether or not Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian themes will continue to appear and why they might be present.
