Nietzschean Witchers: Beyond Master and Slave Morality in Crossroad of Ravens
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The vast majority of people who claim that rape and violence are disgusting and morally unacceptable to them are simply unable to use violence, even in self-defense, in defense of their loved ones - or when necessary. This is called: making a virtue out of weakness.
– Vysogota of Corvo, Crossroad of Ravens
How very Nietzschean of you, Pan Andrze…khm, Vysogota of Corvo. In the chapter that follows, young Geralt kills the wizard Artamon of Asguth—both pre-emptively and in retribution. Crossroad of Ravens is the beginning of Geralt’s story of arriving at himself[^1], so let’s examine this preface.
The underlying assertions can be broken down into key claims:
Most people’s moral objections to violence and rape are not genuine moral positions.
Their morality is a psychological defence mechanism; a post-hoc rationalization.
Powerlessness—inability to engage in violence effectively—is being reframed as moral superiority.
True morality requires the capacity for action.
The preface seems to speak to Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of ‘slave morality’—the idea that the powerless (‘the slaves’, ‘the masses’, ‘the herd’) create moral systems that valorize their own condition, while resentfully condemning the behaviour and traits of the powerful. Their actions are fundamentally reactions. The powerful (‘the noble’, ‘the aristocrats’, ‘the strong’), meanwhile, act and define Good according to themselves, embracing their capacity for violence when needing to ‘dominate’[^2] or control others to achieve their ends, affirming their own self in their expressions of power—exhibiting ‘master morality’. Masters create morality, slaves respond to it.
Moral systems that the weak construct and live by are, essentially, for coping with their lot. Master morality originates in sentiment, slave morality in ressentiment, which in Nietzsche’s writings always has associations with revenge and with the inferior position of the person harbouring it. By making a virtue out of weakness, slave morality foregoes admitting that their weakness was in the beginning forced upon them by a master.
Crucially, both moralities are expressions of will to power in different forms. The master-slave axis is describing the nature of people’s moral deliberation when trying to ‘get what they want.’ Even the seeming rejection of power in slave morality is itself a power play—what Nietzsche calls ‘the tyranny of the weak’. ‘Slave morality’ emerges from a position of weakness, but its expression manifests the slaves’ particular will to power. They push for a metaphysical interpretation of the world that puts them in a position of power over life, and gives them means of becoming according to their nature, while making masters alike them as well.
Before seeing how young Geralt slots into this, let’s examine the quote again.
Critiquing the Quote
The vast majority of people who claim that rape and violence are disgusting and morally unacceptable to them are simply unable to use violence… in defense… when necessary.
This statement has several limitations:
It conflates, and ignores that there’s a difference between capability for defensive violence and inclination toward predatory violence.
It commits a genetic fallacy by suggesting that the origin of a moral belief (the alleged “weakness”) invalidates its legitimacy.
We could argue that moral revulsion toward rape and excessive violence served evolutionary functions in building cooperative societies. Hence these moral intuitions would not be merely rationalizations but adaptive traits, and legitimate.
It overlooks moral rejection of violence independent of capability.
Many capable of violence choose to reject it on genuine moral grounds.
Those who cannot fight back might still never choose violence even if they could.
It doesn’t address whether moral beliefs can be genuine even if untested.
Furthermore, if all violence is seen as equivalent[^3] then the stance, despite seeming critical of the status quo, can:
Serve the powerful by suggesting that everyone would abuse power if they had it.
Falsely equate the inability to be violent with the choice of not harming others (i.e. everyone’s a predator in disguise).
Diminish genuine moral choice.
The preface seems aimed at those who conflate all forms of force as equally wrong at all times, thus making themselves morally and practically defenceless against predators. It also alludes to the hypocrisy of servility; survival instinct necessitates self-defence.[^4] Therefore, I would argue it critiques self-deception (key to ressentiment), which doesn’t facilitate growth.
Systemic Critique
In Sapkowskian society, there are no fair judges nor honest bankers.[^5] Insofar as the Witcher follows the experiences of the marginalized, we never really see functional institutions or effective, just governance that lives up to its ideals. The self-satisfaction of the powerful with their deeds and ends is never portrayed as anything but suspicious at best and hypocritical, if not downright malicious, more often.
What appears as bias toward the marginalized perspective reflects a Nietzschean truth: while true masters reshape reality itself, almost no one achieves this level of will to power. We—the readers—find ourselves among everyone else: we cannot transcend the position of the herd. As Geralt, how we deliberate is set: we cannot help but interpret everything in terms of moral judgment, as almost everyone in the game of will to power. Because what are we supposed to do if we are not Jesus?
Fulko Artevelde cannot sound credible to someone like Geralt, because scapegoating is the standard result of the daily vilification Geralt experiences. Unsurprisingly, he deems institutional violence and corruption worse than individual criminality because the former corrupts the entire system meant to protect people. Incidentally, Fulko’s and Geralt’s exchange illuminates the system: institutions are another arena where morality expresses itself, and pure expression of either morality is unlikely (if not impossible).
At face value, Fulko’s zeal is about guaranteeing public safety: protect the weak! serve a higher cause than power! Markers of slave morality? Geralt, however, tears at this ‘protection’ as enabling abuse of power. He judges Law for morphing into a mere tool of domination and reveals the hypocrisy in claiming to protect while actually oppressing. This could be read as slave morality, or a clear-eyed exposure of how power actually operates—behind moral masks.
When society asserts its will through institutional displays of force, it cloaks the need for such force in terms of ‘slave morality’: appealing to order, justice, social good, general welfare. Appeals to its own power is not very good optics, after all. Then, when the marginal element does stand up for themselves, violating social values they themselves hold dear as safeguards against the abuse of power, it will seem like they are breaking the social contract.[^6] The institution has positioned itself as the defender of those values, despite actually being operated by people with master morality principles. Hence, if the weak gain power by corrupting the strong into engaging in moral judgements and coming to believe their actions are evil, then the strong respond with entrapment in kind. The marginalized who suddenly refuse to “turn the other cheek” are violating their own moral inclinations.
This, by and large, is what happens with Geralt, or any other vigilante, when they decide to take justice into their own hands.
Vysogota's cynicism then, exposes how slave morality itself becomes a tool of control: the very moral framework created by the weak to cope with powerlessness becomes weaponized by institutions to maintain their monopoly on violence. The system doesn't just condemn individual acts of resistance - it manipulates the moral instincts of the oppressed against themselves. When witchers or women consider violent self-defense, they must first overcome not just physical constraints but their own internalized moral frameworks that have been twisted to serve power. The 'weakness' Vysogota identifies isn't just an individual's inability to act—it's how moral values themselves become chains for the oppressed.
Between Master and Slave
In Crossroad of Ravens, until the critical shift at the very end, Geralt moves through the mentality of slave-morality which he inherits by belonging to the witcher caste. It’s part of his arriving at himself.
Despite his transhuman nature, Geralt:
struggles with his ‘defective’ nature because he doesn’t match an external ideal of the ‘perfect, emotionless witcher’;
defines his actions in terms of what he ‘should’ do rather than what he wants to do; questioning the right of the powerful to dominate;
empathises with the oppressed and continues to see himself as an outcast; accepting his lower social status despite physical capability;
values protection of weakness as the protection of Good.
In Nietzschean terms, Good is synonymous with ‘nobility’. ’The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, “what is harmful to me is harmful in itself”; it knows itself to be that which first accords honour to things; it is value-creating.’ In judging according to his conscience and acting directly upon those judgments, Geralt actually embodies this sense of nobility - yet his social position ensures he will be punished for precisely these noble traits.
Consider the parallel with a wizard:
"…evidence," Artamon said.
[…]
“I know who murdered Sergeant Margulies and the others. And I will not wait for the law to finally wake up. I will take matters in to my own hands.”
Artamon—one of the elite—behaves, in principle, just as Holt does, just as Geralt does upon encountering the rapist or learning of threats to his companions. All three men judge and act directly, taking matters into their own hands rather than waiting for external authority. The will to act—this noble trait—differs not at all between them. What differs are the consequences: Artamon is likely to face no legal repercussions. The system is made by and for the likes of him. For Geralt, exercising the same impulse leads to the gallows; pushing him toward the very ressentiment characteristic of slave morality.
The legitimacy of the governing bodies’ sole claim to the monopoly of violence rests in their wielding that violence impartially in service of social order (some form of relatively stable equilibrium). According to its social contract with us, we don’t randomly retaliate with (dis)proportionate violence to violations of various degrees by individuals and the law/state ensures we are not unduly violated. Should marginalized groups exercise defensive violence—by becoming vigilantes, for example—the system must punish them in order to avoid precedents of power residing elsewhere. Someone who takes matters into their own hands—according to their own arbitrary morals—sets themselves up as a challenger to power.
The question becomes more pressing when:
the challenger is a persona non grata;
the system is corrupt.
“Holt is a rat. And he deserves a rat's death.”
Witchers, by their nature, complicate the matter. A witcher possesses what Nietzsche would call ‘master’ traits:
Physical power
Willingness to act
Individual moral judgement
Initiative for direct action rather than appeal to higher authority
Socially, however, witchers are positioned as the oppressed outcasts. They have the physical capabilities of a ‘master’ but the social position of a ‘slave’. Especially in relation to wizards; originally created by them specifically as tools of violence for the powerful. Instead, witchers became a social welfare project. Consequently, they face social persecution for exercising their capacity for violence outside prescribed boundaries—specifically, for exercising their ‘master traits’ against ‘masters’.
Were a witcher in the service of a king, the king’s protection would make their acts of violence fall under different rules of legitimacy. They’d be an extension of the upper class instead of being a dangerously more capable extension of the lower class. Witchers, therefore, possess all physical/kinetic power but lack all social/potential power—the range of moral choices they can practically make is constrained by the “belonging” of their instrumental value.[^7]
Beyond Master and Slave
When Geralt kills Artamon, he acts from multiple motives: preventing harm to his companions, self-defence against promised visisection, and vengeance for Monstrum. At some point, he must realize that the line between justified protective violence and something else is ephemeral, and that he—a feeling witcher—is as capable of rationalizing violence as his opponents.
Young Geralt intuitively wishes to wield power in service of the powerless. Under Holt, he learns to make a virtue out of strategic submission, as the powerful do when they pretend to play by the rules of ‘slave morality’. He moves from naive use of power to making conscious choices about how to wield it, and when. When he finally rejects dominance from a position of strength, it comes from choice rather than necessity—he could ‘pull a Holt’ and pursue vengeance but chooses not to. Instead of continuing to react as a slave would, he consciously identifies with the oppressed while determining what is Good in his eyes inherently.
The way beyond the bind that neither succumbs to pure power nor remains trapped in moral judgement comes by way of actions born of love. When Geralt acts out of care, he transcends both master and slave moralities. Love, being its own cause and motive, offers a path to authentic expression of will to power that doesn’t depend on either domination or moral frameworks. This is where Geralt arrives at himself, simply being as he believes best.
In this way, young Geralt’s journey challenges Vysogota’s cynicism by demonstrating that moral choices about violence aren’t always about ability or inability, but about purpose and consequence. Developing his own warrior monk moral agency, he learns a hard lesson: what is good for the soul (pacifism) is not necessarily what the society sometimes needs, and what the society (force) sometimes needs is not necessarily good for the soul.
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Footnotes
[^1]: …if one's metaphysical interpretation is of self-overcoming, how can one overcome that? Or maybe one simply arrives.
[^2]: By ‘domination’ is meant something like: a genuinely powerful person will not encounter resistance (or it won’t matter). The strong get their way against the odds (e.g. Jesus got killed, still won).
[^3]: If there is a difference between defensive and predatory violence, which violence, by how much, is justified, and when? When does defensive violence—ensuring another person cannot continue harming us—become excessive? What would restrain predatory violence pre-emptively? Plenty of empirical questions.
[^4]: An aspiring autocrat could herein pivot into theorizing about levels of sustainable oppression. Thankfully, Ashby’s law gets most human despots.
[^5]: If the banking cartel was not controlled by the dwarves that is; and even then…
[^6]: It’s why Gandhi’s non-violent resistance is extraordinary for a Nietzschean.
[^7]: How, then, does ‘slave morality’ manifest in complex power structures? When the physically powerful are socially oppressed, do they develop different moral frameworks than those who are both physically and socially weak? Do the physically powerful strive to become socially powerful and are a) co-opted by the status quo, b) defeat the powerful and become the new oppressors? Is there a difference between: making a virtue of weakness (slave morality); strategically choosing when to use strength (practical wisdom); using strength in service of the weak (vigilante path)?
Or the post analyzing their foiling throughout The Witcher Saga.
While there are quite a few characters who undergo development in the saga, I’d say the four most complete arcs are Yennefer’s, Geralt’s, Ciri’s, and Cahir’s, because all four of them follow the same Jungian/alchemical structure. I’ll write something on Yennefer as the Red King and Geralt as the White Queen (no, those terms are not me mixing them up) later on, but for now I want to focus on Ciri and Cahir, because they are utterly necessary for each other’s arcs. They meet three times, and each of these meetings mark particular points in their development.
In this meta, I’m going to focus specifically on the very blatant Jungian symbolism employed by Sapkowski. (Honestly the symbolism is basically Jung 101.) In particular, Sapkowski draws from Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, which explores alchemy as a metaphor for individuation. Individuation is the main goal of Jungian psychology and literature, and it refers to a person reconciling with themselves to become a complete person, without repression, the best they can be. This “complete person/best person you can be” is akin to the philosopher’s stone in literary alchemy, and that is the journey of Yennefer’s, Geralt’s, Ciri’s, and Cahir’s arcs. Additionally, Cahir is Ciri’s shadow, and Ciri is Cahir’s anima.
NB before we continue: while anima/animus is often romantic in stories, it does not have to be; for example, Jung spoke of one potential frequent anima as a character’s sister. So while Cahir does say he’s in love with Ciri, I’m not delving into that debate in this post. Ty.
The Black Raven: Cintra
Literary alchemy begins with the prima materia, the primary material that comprises the entire world and from which the philosopher’s stone will be formed (the reason alchemists want to form the stone? It creates the elixir of life, which grants eternal life. This is important for The Witcher’s themes). The Fall of Cintra is where the main saga begins, and it’s also where Ciri and Cahir meet. Cintra itself is not the prima materia; rather, Ciri and Cahir are.
Cahir describes his mindset before the fall of Cintra as, essentially, the opposite of the ultimate goal of individuation:
A soldier does not question commands... He does not analyze them, he does not think about them, and he does not expect an explanation of their meaning. This is the first thing they taught us soldiers.
Whereas Ciri is quite literally a child at this point: innocent, mischievous, unaware of the horrors that await her. A child relies on adults to help them survive; they cannot individuate because they need people to care for them.
Ciri is in a sense Cahir’s inner child. In Jungian works, true adulthood can only be achieved when the person learns to parent or care for their inner child. Later on, we hear that Child!Cahir is noted to be mischievous and fun, much like Ciri:
Small Cahir preferred running around the walls and fighting with his peers from families who came with their parents for the funeral, burial and ceremony. Cahir was devoted to making mischief by the walls.
But that changes with his brother’s death and his mother’s admonition:
“Remember, my son,” Mawr sobbed, clutching her child to her breast so hard he could not breathe. “Remember this day. Never forget who put your dear brother Aillil to death. It was those damn Nordlings. Your enemies, my son. Be sure to hate them. Never stop hating that damn nation of murderers!”
“I will always hate, Mother,” Cahir promised.
Jung comments that the inner child “represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself;” i.e. someone has to connect with their inner child in order to be able to develop a sense of who they want to become and thereby achieve individuation. Cahir’s goals prior to meeting Ciri are to achieve fame and glory in war, but once he encounters his inner child, that gradually becomes less important.
The first stage in alchemy is Nigredo, or the blackening. Nigredo is associated with night, death, dark nights of the soul, and specifically with ravens and crows as well. In fact, Jung called the darkest parts of Nigredo “the raven’s head.” (Yes, really.)
The Fall of Cintra and Ciri and Cahir’s meeting takes place at night, and Ciri’s main memory of this is the knight with raven wings on his helmet, marking this as Nigredo in both of their developments.
But even more than that, Nigredo can be divided into further steps. George Ripley’s Magnum Opus (which influenced Shakespeare, among other well known writers who shaped literary tradition) identifies the first stage as “calcination,” which refers to heating something to extremely high temperatures (thus, the blackening). To rescue Ciri, Cahir has to ride through literal flames.
The second step is “dissolution/solution,” in which something dissolves. The bath scene is dissolution, as Ciri is covered in burns an coated in blood, feces, dirt, and smoke. However, this is traumatizing for Ciri, because she has no idea why this stranger who can’t even bring himself to speak to her is bathing her. Cahir regrets it as well.
The next step is “separation.” Cahir falls asleep and wakes up to find Ciri gone. Jung cites this separation as being a particular separation of the anima and animus. But it’s this that gives Cahir time to reflect on his life choices and his allegiance to Emhyr (even if he doesn’t break right away with Emhyr): “I cried with anger against an emperor who likes chasing little girls. I cried for a year while sitting in a cell in the Citadel.”
Following their first meeting, Ciri has nightmares about Cahir, and Cahir has dreams about Ciri.
Ciri sees Cahir as a nightmare, a nightmare she needs to face rather than repress, in order to find hope for herself after all the trauma she’s been through. But at this point, she can’t quite do that, and at first is somewhat imprisoned by the nightmares. This marks Cahir as Ciri’s Jungian Shadow (the archetype Jung associated with Nigredo), which is essentially the part of ourselves that we try to repress. Ciri cannot remember exactly what happened with Cahir (a sign of repression), but she does remember his helmet and her fear. She is afraid of him in her dreams.
The White Monster: Thanedd
Prison and repression are strong motifs in both Cahir’s and Ciri’s arcs, but the difference is that Cahir is the one who starts out imprisoning himself whereas Ciri’s is more natural as a result of her being a literal child. Cahir is not going to grow at all by taking Ciri prisoner, but he tries to do so because he himself is a prisoner. He’s a prisoner of his family’s role and then a literal prisoner in Emhyr’s dungeon, condemned to die for over a year. He’s allowed to go free specifically because he’s literally the only Nilfgaardian who has seen Ciri and thereby they need him. Thus the concept of Ciri sets him free, but you can’t be truly free when you’re seeking to imprison someone else.
Yet Cahir still dreams about the girl with a rose tattoo. Cahir sees Ciri as a rose (something beautiful rising from thorns/pain), as his destiny according to the line of thinking that destiny is hope. The rose is red, symbolic of Rubedo, or what Ciri will become and what Cahir needs to aim for: philosopher’s stones, capable of producing eternal life.
I do think it’s important that the Ciri Cahir expresses himself as in love with is the one who appears in his dreams—as animas often do (Anima is the archetype of the Albedo stage, according to Jung). Jung says:
It belongs to him, this perilous image of Woman; she stands for the loyalty which in the interests of life he must sometimes forego; she is the much needed compensation for the risks, struggles, sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life. And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist, the seductress, who draws him into life with her Maya – and not only into life’s reasonable and useful aspects, but into its frightful paradoxes and ambivalences where good and evil, success and ruin, hope and despair, counterbalance one another. Because she is his greatest danger she demands from a man his greatest, and if he has it in him she will receive it.
Seductress doesn’t have to mean sexual in this context, FYI. Think of the anima as tempting/seducing the man to grow as a human being. The point is that it’s this dream that encourages Cahir to grow, thereby setting himself free on the path to individuation.
Their second meeting comes at Thanedd, signifying Albedo, or the whitening. If Nigredo is the process of breaking things down, then Albedo is the process of cleansing away the impurities. “Conjunction” is a term in which all the separated parts that can be salvaged from the Nigredo come together: for Ciri, in the persons of Geralt and Yennefer and the like; for Cahir, it’s more internal (again more fittingly, because he’s an older teenager at this point). What he has left to grasp cannot be grasped as who he is currently, but he’s freed because of Ciri, and needs to continue to pursue what Ciri represents. That’s kinda all that’s salvageable.
They fight, and Ciri spares his life, marking Ciri’s decision towards individuation... because Ciri sees her inner child in Cahir, a bruised innocence she chooses not to kill:
There was no black helmet, no wings of a bird of prey, whose sound had pursued her in her nightmares. He was no longer the Black Knight of Cintra. Instead there was a pale dark-haired young man writhing in a pool of blood, a young man with blue eyes and his mouth twisted into a grimace of terror. The Black Knight of Cintra had fallen under the blows of her sword, had ceased to exist, the wings that caused her to be afraid were no more than limp feathers. The frightened boy, bent over, vomiting blood, was nothing. She did not know him, had never seen him before.... She was not afraid of him, did not hate him. She did not want to kill him.
She threw her sword on the ground.
This marks step towards maturity and towards reconciling with her shadow for Ciri.
Sapkowski then focuses on emphasizing just where we are in Ciri and Cahir’s refinement, making sure we recognize the white motif in this scene. Like, we get it, Geralt has white hair. It’s repeated so often for the symbolic purpose (emphasis is mine):
A white-haired monster attacked them. He jumped from the wall. From a height it was impossible to jump without breaking a leg. It was impossible to land softly, turning a pirouette that blurred to the eye and killing a split second later. But the white-haired monster did it. And he began to kill.
The Scoia’tael fought fiercely. They had the advantage. But they had no chance. Cahir gaped in horror at the sight of the massacre that was carried out. The gray-haired girl who had struck him a moment ago was fast, was incredible agile as a cat who was protecting her kittens. But the white-haired monster who jumped upon the Scoia’tael was like a Zerrikanian tiger. The gray-haired girl from Cintra, who, for unknown reason, had not killed him, had seemed to be crazy. The white-haired monster was not crazy. He was calm and cold. And calmly and coldly killed...
When Cahir opened his eyes, the monster was right before him. ‘Don’t kill me...’ he whispered, abandoning his attempts to rise on the floor slippery with blood. The hand that had been wounded by the gray-haired girl had stopped hurting and was numb.
‘I know who you are, Nilfgaardian.’ The monster with the white hair kicked the helmet with the broken wing. You’ve stubbornly pursued her for a long time. But you couldn’t even hurt her.’
‘Don’t kill me.’
‘Give me a reason. Just one. Quickly.’
‘I..’ whispered Cahir ‘I was the one who took her from Cintra. The fire... I saved her. I saved her life...’
When he opened his eyes the monster was gone, he was alone in the yard, alone with the bodies of the elves. The tinkling water from the fountain, poured over the edge of the pond, washing the blood from the floor.
Not only is there emphasis on white, but there is emphasis on washing away blood, or impurities, for Cahir. His reputation in Nilfgaard cannot be salvaged; only his soul, which chose to save a girl once, can be.
But guess what the next steps are in Albedo (if you said happy, you’d be sadly wrong): “putrefication” and “congelation.”
We see putrefication (focus on death and rotting) in Ciri, when she’s wandering the Frying Pan and trying to survive, her mind breaking and frustration and abandonment welling up inside of her. While this marks a darker, negative turn for her character, it’s actually very necessary towards getting Ciri to a place where she can accept her shadow self, represented in the person of Cahir.
In Cahir, putrefication lands him captured, to brought to Nilfgaard chained in a coffin. This is not subtly symbolic of him listening to his mother and chaining himself to an idea of hate that was born in death and can only ever end in death. When Geralt (the white monster) frees him, he is reborn, in a sense, and given a second chance not in the same sense Emhyr gave him a second chance: he cannot spend a second chance doing what brought him there in the first place. No, he has to change. This is further symbolized by Geralt giving Cahir the knife and telling him to free himself or wait to be found by other Nilfgaardians, sharply contrasting with how Cahir was freed before (for the purpose of serving Nilfgaard).
Congelation involves heat and requires lots of water, which is also seen in Ciri in the Frying Pan (for her, putrefication and congelation are kind of combined; this is not unusual in alchemical stories). When Cahir is freed from the coffin and when he later asks to join Geralt, Milva, and Jaskier, it is noted to be raining: “After the summer drought, the land was now soaked with water and the forest paths had turned to mud slides.”
Buildup to Stygga
So... I know I said I would be talking about their three meetings, and I am doing so, but technically there is another stage between Albedo and Rubedo (red), called Citrinitas (yellowing/golden). However, it’s most often compressed into Rubedo. So you could see Citrinitas as the buildup to Stygga and thereby part of Rubedo, and I kind of do, but I’m putting it in its own section for now.
Citrinitas focuses on the light, or fire. Basically, it’s where everything starts to go very, very wrong for Ciri.
Life isn’t kind enough to let Ciri continue as an innocent, merciful child. She literally draws from fire to save the unicorn, but ends up in a dark place afterwards. The next stages are “cibation,” “sublimation,” and “fermentation.” Ciri’s journey through these stages are quite clear: cibation is with the Rats, in which she distracts herself but also feeds herself with skills she will later use in her journey, sublimation is when she literally travels to a different world for (with sublimation meaning solid becoming air, and Ripley describes it as “in the air our child must thus be born,” which very much reflects Ciri’s journey back to her world), and fermentation... Stygga. It’s also telling that Ciri encounters Jung’s archetype of the wise old man in Vysogota during these stages, because Jun associated Citrinitas with that archetype.
Cahir, however, has a slightly different journey. Cibation is when he joins the hansa and starts to learn from Milva, Geralt, Jaskier, and Regis--in particular, from Regis, his own wise old man archetype, he learns redemption. They feed him in a spiritual sense. Sublimation is when he finally reconciles with his inner child as himself, exemplified in his relationship with Geralt.
For starters, Cahir acts like a child in punching Geralt for accusing him of betraying them, and is then treated by a child by Milva when she literally uses her whip to spank them apart. Then, Cahir gets injured and Geralt has to save him, which marks a moment at which both Cahir and Geralt reconcile with their inner child. (While I plan on writing a different post for Geralt and Yennefer, this point in Geralt’s development matters for Cahir’s own journey; hence its inclusion.)
Geralt has been blaming Cahir because he fears Yennefer has betrayed them, and so lashes out at someone he knows hurt someone he loves once, projecting his own insecurities and fears he abandoned Ciri onto Cahir. Geralt is only able to get over his distressed fears about Yennefer’s betrayal by acting like, well, a dad to a feverish Cahir, who opens up at last and keeps asking for reassurance like a child:
Cahir finally showed some signs of life, and shortly afterwards – miraculously – he stood up, cursed himself, and held his head. They continued on. Initially, Cahir moved quickly. Then, he slowed down. Then, he fell.
Geralt took turns carrying him on his back and dragging him, groaning, pushing against rocks.
...
“Geralt?”
“Yes.”
Cahir straightened the logs in the fire with the help of a leg bone he had found.
“In the mine, as we fought… I was scared, you know?”
“I know.”
...
“I've seen her constantly in dreams… I see her still, as a woman – beautiful, confident, provocative… with details, such as a fire-red rose tattooed in her groin…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I do not know, do not know, myself… But it was, and still is. I see her still, in the dreams, just as I had seen her in a dream back then… So, I agreed to take the mission on Thanedd. That's why I wanted to join you later. I… I still want to once again… to see her once again, to touch her hair, to look into her the eyes… I want to see her. Strike me dead, if you want. But I'm going to stop pretending. I think… I think I love her. I beg you, do not laugh.”
“I am not laughing.”
In a sense, Cahir’s role in regards to Geralt is giving Geralt a chance to see what Ciri has become before they reunite: an innocent mistreated by the world, a red rose striving to grow even among thorns, marked by her trauma but strong. Geralt helping Cahir is Geralt coming to terms with his inner child in both Cahir and in Ciri. And for Cahir, he comes to term with his inner child in himself, and acknowledges Ciri as not just his anima, but as a necessary part of the philosopher’s stone he’s becoming. Ciri’s tattoo is notably red, the color of Rubedo, of completion. The red rose is a sign of what Cahir has to pursue.
The Red Rose: Stygga Castle
“Exaltation” is where, according to Ripley, all things combine at last. He quotes Christ from the Bible as saying: “if I exalted be/Then shall I draw all things unto me.” Hence, Stygga is where everyone and everything comes together, from Ciri to the Hansa to Bonhart to Vilgefortz and Yennefer to Emhyr himself.
Exaltation is where “two contraries together shall meet.” By the time Ciri and Cahir reunite, they have both changed. This time, Ciri still is afraid, but then she recognizes the idea of redemption inside him, because it’s one she’s had to grapple with herself now. In doing so, she is no longer afraid of her shadow self. He apologizes and she sees him as a human and not as a nightmare, she accepts her shadow, thereby freeing herself from her fear that she is irredeemable. In other words, Ciri is brought closer to individuation than ever before.
Cahir, likewise, decides who he is and who he will be right there, thus achieving individuation and fulfilling the Jungian Self archetype (which is the archetype Jung associated with Rubedo). Cahir goes from being Ciri’s literal nightmare to being the one Ciri trusts to protect her from her nightmare in Bonhart:
“Run,” Ciri whispered, seeing who was coming down the second passage. “It is the devil incarnate. But he wants me and will not chase you… Go. Help Geralt…”
Cahir shook his head. “Ciri,” he said mildly. “I’m surprised at you. I cross the whole world to see you, and now that I found you, to redeem myself, to save you and defend you. And you want me to run away now?”
“You don’t know who you are dealing with.”
Cahir tugged on his gloves, removed his coat and wrapped it around his left arm. He waved his sword and swung it until it whistled in the air. “I would know.”
At the sight of the trio, Bonhart stopped. But only for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “There was a rescue? Your friends, witcheress? All right. Two more or less, it does not make a difference.”
Ciri suddenly thought of something. “Say goodbye to your life, Bonhart,” she cried. “This is your end. Here is your match!”
Undoubtedly she exaggerated. Bonhart caught the false note in her voice. He looked suspicious. “The witcher? Really?”
Cahir swung his sword, standing in position.
Bonhart did not waver. “Well, well, the witcher is younger than I thought... It would be more sensible, in that case, to get out of my way and flee. I want this wench, I have nothing against you.”
“Strong words,” Cahir said calmly. “Let’s see what else you can do. Angoulême, Ciri, run!”
Cahir’s being equated with Geralt in the above fight with Bonhart is significant. Ciri is Geralt's innocent side, and Cahir his not-so-innocent side. That Cahir both is held accountable by Geralt and comforted by him is important for Cahir and Geralt’s respective growths. By growing towards Ciri, his anima, Cahir has become more like Geralt, and towards Cahir’s ideal self as well: a knight who really saves people. He has become a philosopher’s stone.
The scene where Cahir dies describes quite a bit of red, noting that his blood falls at the feet of a statue like a sacrifice. He knows he doesn’t have much of a chance against Bonhart, but instead of the terrified boy begging Geralt to be spared, he’s willing to lay it all down to give Ciri a chance to escape. And he’s able to do it knowing that she expressed that she believed in him, and was trying to unnerve Bonhart to give Cahir the best chance possible.
Cahir’s mother told him to fuel himself with hate, but in the end, Cahir died for love, and he was better for it.
It’s also no coincidence then that after reconciling with her shadow in the person of Cahir, Ciri is finally able to defeat Bonhart. Nor is it a coincidence that she extends Bonhart the same mercy she once showed Cahir, sparking his redemption, to Bonhart. She can do this now, because she is no longer afraid of her mercy, her inner child, or of her darker side. She is fully herSelf. When Bonhart tries to kill her anyways, she is able to do what she has to do in that situation and without blaming herself.
Only then does Ciri truly mature and then reunite with her parents in Yennefer and Geralt (black and white, as Ciri is gray in hair; not coincidentally). She is exalted, then, as the philosopher’s stone. She is able to express her innocence and darker instincts together, weeping when she is told to say goodbye to them, and it’s the sight of that innocent child, the one that coexists inside her now, that spurs Emhyr to free her.
Neither Geralt nor Yennefer. Never again.
That awareness, in one fell swoop wiped away her fake mask of courage. Ciri’s face contracted and contorted her eyes filled with tears, and her nose ran. The girl fought with all her might, but in vain. A wave broke the dam as the tears made an appearance.
The Nilfgaardians in salamander cloaks looked on silently. And amazed. Some had seen her on the stairs covered in blood, had seen her talking with the Emperor. A witcheress with a sword, who was defying the Emperor himself. And now they were stunned, seeing a simple girl crying and sobbing.
...She struggled, but to no avail. The more she tried to restrain herself, the more she cried.
...
“A strange thing, fate,” she heard him whisper faintly. “Goodbye, my daughter.”
Of note, exaltation is where “man and wife” are “bur[ied] together/To be after revived in the spirit of life.” Geralt and Yennefer are sealed in a bath to commit suicide together, but make love first, and Ciri’s being freed means that they do not have to die after all. As the philosopher’s Stone, Ciri is able to produce the elixir of life.
Multiplication is the next stage, which is less overt in the text because in literature it’s often quantity, but it can be quality as well. Ciri taking her own destiny in her hands before the council of mages increases her quality as the philosopher’s stone; thereby I’d call that multiplication. Cahir dies during exaltation, but you could perhaps see his sacrifice as a way of enabling the multiplication and projection of Ciri.
Ciri’s ability to produce the elixir of life is further seen in the end scenario, where Ciri spirits both Geralt and Yennefer away to Avalon. Whether they are literally alive or not is not clear nor important, because they have transcended life itself. They have become legends, living eternally in them, as has everyone who traveled with them. Ciri telling Lancelot her story is projection, the sharing of the legend, the stone, the elixir of life, with the whole world... or in this case, worlds.
