(For those who have not read the introduction, you will find a series of disclaimers and content warnings t/here. I encourage you to read to those first since there are plenty of thorny/adult topics covered in this part.)
Jenova
and Jehova, giving and receiving, and the symbolic rape of Cloud
The
name “Jenova” requires only a small amount of imagination for the player with some
religious education to decode. One can read it is a cross between Jehovah (the
anglicised pronunciation of “Yahweh”) and “nova” (i.e. “new”), meaning “new
god”. Of course, this fits easily with the idea of an otherworldly being
arriving to take over the planet and thus, has this obvious, superficial
meaning. Alternatively, however, Jenova’s name can be decoded as je-NO-va, as
in, god of “no”, “god of negation”, or something similar. This can be connected
with the Kabbalistic negative theology discussed above, in which God, ein
sof is believed to lack any humanly definable characteristics.
This
latter reading is supported by some of the dialogue in the game. During the
Kalm flashback, we learn from Sephiroth that Jenova ‘was found in a 2000
year old geological stratum. Since there is nothing in-game to
suggest what year it is in the story, it is not too much of a stretch given the
religious themes mentioned so far to make the connection between the timeline
of Jenova’s arrival on Gaia, and the advent of Christianity in the real world.
FF7 would not be the first JRPG to take crude stabs at Christianity or
Abrahamic religions more generally, and so the idea of a 2000 year-old “crisis
from the skies” named “Jenova” has an obvious anti-religious flavour to it. As
if to hammer this real-world point home, Sephiroth exclaims ‘Don't you
get it? An Ancient named Jenova was found in the geological stratum of 2000
years ago’ (my emphasis).
The
idea of Jenova as a god of negation is represented, in certain other small
comments made during Sephiroth’s dialogue, as well as that of Ifalna (Aerith’s
mother), and Professor Gast, the scientist who unearthed Jenova. Sephiroth
describes Jenova’s key characteristic as that of making things appear
differently then what they really are. During a pivotal scene in the middle of
the game, Sephiroth explains, ‘The ability to change one's looks, voice,
and words, is the power of Jenova.’ He uses this
to imply that Tifa’s memory of Cloud and even Cloud’s own physical appearance
are mere illusions projected by Jenova: ‘Inside of you, Jenova has
merged with Tifa's memories, creating you. Out of Tifa's memory...... A boy
named Cloud might've just been a part of them.’ In
another scene later on, Aerith’s mother, Ifalna (a true Cetra) describes
to Professor Gast the nature of this extra-terrestrial being. Ifalna calls
Jenova ‘the crisis from the sky’, and details her abilities:
It looked
like...our...our dead mothers ...and our dead brothers. Showing us spectres of
their past. […] That's when the one who injured the Planet... or the 'crisis
from the sky', as we call him, came. He first approached as a friend, deceived
them, and finally...... gave them the virus. The Cetra were attacked by the
virus and went mad... transforming into monsters. Then, just as he had at the
Knowlespole. He approached other Cetra clans...... infecting them with... the
virus...
The first
thing to note in all of these descriptions of Jenova is his/her ability to
manifest in different forms, particularly to appear in the form of a living
person’s memories. Another way to express this is that Jenova has no definite
form of his/her own. In this sense, she/he is a mirror image of the Kabbalistic
ein sof: whereas the ein sof has no graspable characteristics
because they are beyond any kind of definition, Jenova has no real
characteristics of her own in the sense that she/he completely lacks
them. All that we see of Jenova is deception, dissimulation, illusion and
shape-shifting, and this explains why Jenova initially appears to the player in
the guise of Sephiroth’s body (or at least, Cloud’s memory of it) just before
the protagonist’s party confronts her at numerous points in the game.
This
illusory or dissimulating characteristic of Jenova is also represented
obliquely in the ambiguity of his/her gender identity. It’s noteworthy that
whilst Jenova’s design is stereotypically female (breasts, wide hips, delicate
jawline, etcetera), and whilst Sephiroth designates Jenova as his ‘mother’,
Ifalna refers to Jenova as he/him. This cannot be dismissed as a one-off typo
as the script uses the masculine pronoun here repeatedly. Again, there is
kabbalistic connection that can help to make sense of this ambiguity. Within
kabbalah, there exists the idea of a masculine and feminine (but not
necessarily male or female) aspect of God’s/ein sof’s manifestation in
the material world. As with other medieval thought, Kabbalah also inherits the classical
Greek philosophical idea of the parallel between the local, earthly, or
personal on one hand, and the global, cosmic, or divine on the other. That is, Kabbalah
makes use of the microcosm/macrocosm analogy.
[1]
Thus, for instance, the Lurianic Jewish tradition posits that the individual’s religious
observation has, as its goal, the (re) unification, or balancing, of masculine
and feminine within the person of the worshipper, in order to restore
the primordial oneness of masculine and feminine within the universe.[2]
Most
obviously, the ambiguity in Jenova’s gender seems to reflect this kabbalistic belief
in the duality of the divine masculine/feminine, since she/he appears female
but is designated by Ifalna as male. On a deeper level we can also understand
this ambiguity, once again, as reflective of Jenova’s essential characteristic,
namely, his/her capacity for creating illusion. Jenova lies about who
she/he is – she/he produces false memories, and visions of things that never
happened. Thus, he/she is a unity of opposites only in the sense that a lie can
stand in for the truth, as though it were the same thing. This androgyny is
also present in Sephiroth’s physical appearance, since his design incorporates
long hair, flowing robes and a delicate jawline, combined with huge phallic
sword and hulking muscles. Yet in his case the significance is different: Sephiroth
believes he is one thing, the chosen one, the son of Jenova, whilst in
fact he is another: the son of two very flawed humans, Hojo and Lucretia.
This
discussion on the theme of the unity of opposites in FF7 leads us, of
course, to the ‘Jenova reunion’. The Kabbalistic idea of a messianic reunion of
masculine and feminine, is bastardised in the catastrophic ‘reunion’ that takes
place in the middle of FF7s storyline. In the game’s lore, the reunion will bring
about the world-ending event (a giant meteor) which Sephiroth had described in
the temple of the ancients, as mentioned above. Professor Hojo also explains: ‘You see, even if Jenova's body is dismembered, it will eventually become
one again. That's what is meant by Jenova's Reunion. I have been waiting for
the Reunion to start.’ Within the fantasy realm of the story, the reunion
grants Sephiroth the spiritual energy required to cast a spell, which will
summon the giant meteor. Tifa exclaims: What are you so happy about,
Professor? You know what this means, don't you? […] Sephiroth is going to
summon Meteor! Every single person is going to die!’ This
event is only made possible by a grand misdirection, which the entire game up
to this point has subjected both the player and Cloud to, one in which we are
manipulated by the game’s antagonists to perform certain actions, whilst
believing ourselves to be acting autonomously.[3]
This reunion is foreshadowed in a
much earlier scene with subtle kabbalistic symbolism in the character’s
gestures. When the player reaches Nibelheim and descends into the Shinra
mansion, the following scene plays out:
Sephiroth:
Are you going to participate in the Reunion?
Cloud: I don't even know what a Reunion is!
Sephiroth:
Jenova will be at the Reunion. Jenova will join the Reunion becoming a calamity
from the skies.
At
this point in the game, there is no way for the player know what is meant by
the term reunion, forcing us to adopt Cloud’s perspective. The setting
of this dialogue makes use of the classic gothic-horror trope of a liminal
space, as Cloud is stood at one end of a dark corridor, and Sephiroth’s
phantasmic figure stands at the other. Thus, not only is Cloud uncomprehending of
what Sephiroth is saying, but nor are we totally sure, as players, who or what
we are looking at, whether it is a ghost, an illusion, Jenova in the guise of
Sephiroth, or the man himself – this only becomes clear on a second watching.
Once again, the liminal setting in which the dialogue plays out enables the
perverse “reunion” between truth and lie described in the paragraph above; it
is as if Sephiroth’s words and his figure are being transformed from one thing
to another in their journey through the corridor: nothing he says is false,
exactly, but nor is its meaning evident. The cryptic nature of Sephiroth’s dialogue
keeps Cloud (and us, the player) in the position of wanting to find out what
was meant so as to prevent the calamity we are warned about. But in doing so, we fall prey to Sephiroth’s manipulation of
Cloud (and us), since we both take the bait, so to speak. However, what
is cryptic at the level of the dialogue is elaborated clearly at the level of
the symbolism of the character’s physical gestures during this scene. In
particular, we must note the symbolism of Sephiroth gifting Cloud an item (the
“destruct materia”), by throwing it forcefully from one end of the corridor to
the other, knocking Cloud to his knees. In Kabbalah, the masculine and feminine
are occasionally characterised in terms of giver and receiver respectively, and
cosmic union is discussed as a matter of the masculine giving and the feminine receiving,
in order to become one with each other.[4]
Here, of course, Sephiroth is foreshadowing the later reunion by giving Cloud
the “destruct” materia. Although the physical force with which the gift is
delivered indicates that the gift is violently forced upon Cloud, it is
nonetheless gladly received by the player. The symbolism of the violently
delivered gift seems to indicate that giver/receiver dichotomy is, for the
authors of FF7, apparently a matter of “destruction”, in this case the “destruction”
of the receiver (Cloud) by the giver (Sephiroth). Only much later on, when
Sephiroth’s/Jenova’s manipulation comes to fruition, is Cloud able to
acknowledge his passivity, and his role as the receiver of Sephiroth’s gift,
i.e. the destruction of any positive notion of his own personality: ‘I wasn't
pursuing Sephiroth. I was being summoned by Sephiroth. All the anger and hatred
I bore him, made it impossible for me to ever forget him. That and what
he gave me’ (my emphasis).
If,
within the symbolism of Kabbalah, giving is masculine and receiving is
feminine, and if, within FF7 this coercive giving/receiving brings-about
the calamitous reunion, then we can think of Sephiroth’s gift to Cloud as
amounting to a symbolic rape. It is a symbolic rape in the sense that Sephiroth
imposes a feminine, passive role upon the unwilling Cloud. Much earlier in the
game, Cloud’s encounter with Mukki in the honeybee inn (a brothel) seems to
foreshadow this, by suggesting that he falls all too easily into a passive role
in perusing his aims.
Mukki: How is it, bubby!? Feels good, huh?
·
[Upon
selecting ".........".]
Cloud: I don't feel good. Let me out...
·
[Upon
selecting "It hurts".]
Cloud: Too stuffy in here...
Mukki: You'll get used to it. Try counting to ten.
Cloud’s
name is also suggestive, not only of a stormy personality, but of a personality
that is amorphous, lacking in a clear, coherent form. Remember here that the importance
of sefirot in kabbalah is to give singular form to a multiplicity of
spiritual attributes that would otherwise remain disconnected. We should not be
surprised then, that something similar is true of Sephiroth in his relationship
to Cloud. Sephiroth’s gift to Cloud, (i.e. ‘what he gave me’) is a form.
Sephiroth gives a consistent form and meaning to the inconsistent fragments of
memory that add up to Cloud’s life at that point in the story. But it is a
purely negative form, since Cloud’s only understanding of who he is mediated
through his desire to avenge the murder of his mother, and later on, Aerith. That
is to say, Sephiroth’s gift has not been asked for by its receiver. Sephiroth’s
method of imposing a form upon Cloud’s life is to coerce him, robbing him of his
autonomy and making him the passive recipient of a vengeful personality. But it
is equally true that Cloud is an empty vessel, so to speak, an individual whose
lack of strong connections to others, and whose sense of personal inadequacy
makes him only too susceptible to the influence of stronger personalities and
ideas.
Once
again, we might begin to consider what FF7s authors are saying about
real-world messianism through the symbolism of Sephiroth’s behaviour. Messianism,
whether religious or secular, gives a form to the lives of their adherents. Correlatively,
it is a force which requires, and which feeds off the passivity and personal
weakness of those adherents. It is a form that destroys more than it creates,
and which is imposed rather than being freely chosen.
Messianism,
revenge fantasy and shame
Here
a short bit of historical information about the social context of kabbalah’s
emergence might be useful, in order to understand the story that FF7 seems to
be telling us about the significance of messianism. One must be careful to note
that the authors of FF7 are not offering a blunt condemnation of messianism,
(nor of Judaism or Christianity) but are trying to construct a narrative in
which the messianic impulse makes psychological sense. In offering such a
story, the player is enabled to make sense of messianism in the real world by
reference to the cautionary story of the game’s main antagonist. As we will
see, the events that produced Sephiroth’s warped messianism are mirrored in the
real-world history of Kabbalah. But we will also see that the attraction of
messianism is rooted in Sephiroth’s inner sense of shame about who and what
he is, that is to say, that messianism functions by appealing to the
psychological weaknesses of those individual living beings who fall prey to it.
It offers an other-worldy escape for those who come to experience the flesh of
their own living bodies as a prison.
As we
already noted, Kabbalah, (particularly within the Lurianic tradition) posits an
analogy between the individual (microcosm) and God/ein sof (macrocosm).
We also noted that, according to this analogy, religious observance is directed
towards achieving a kind of spiritual balance within the individual, in order
to achieve a corresponding state of balance at the divine or cosmic level. It
is instructive to understand the historical context in which these aspects of
Lurianic Kabbalah developed, in order to see how it is reflected in the
Sephiroth’s story arc in FF7. In particular, it is important to note that Lurianic
Kabbalah’s particular messianic understanding of world history can be
understood as a product of the politics of the middle-ages. An event of
particular importance was the expulsion of Jews from Spain after the Alhambra
decree of 1492.[5] During
this period, a very strong significance came to be attached by Kabbalist
thinkers to the microcosm/macrocosm analogy. To grossly oversimplify, if God’s
creation, i.e. this world, is a macrocosm, of which the human is a microcosm, then
the inner practice of the religious devotee is aimed at fixing, or rebalancing
the broken outer world. In other words, for the Jews of medieval Europe,
the pursuit of inner balance between spiritual attributes was a theurgical
attempt to remedy their precarious status in the outer world, given the
existential threat to Judaism posed by the medieval church. Kabbalistic
messianism (in contrast to Christian messianism) involves the salvation of the
Jewish people, not solely by any particular identifiable person, but by bringing
into correspondence the human and the divine. Particularly for Lurianic
Kabbalah, a product of this medieval context, the rebalancing of the sefirot
presages the coming of the messiah, the return of the Jews to the promised
land, and liberation from worldly slavery and from persecution.[6]
Thus, what Sephiroth says a propos the Cetra in FF7 strongly mirrors the
beliefs of the medieval Jews of southern Europe as concerns their own destiny:
‘Cetra was a itinerant race. […] At the end of their harsh, hard journey, they
would find the Promised Land and supreme happiness.’
Yet,
Sephiroth’s spurious membership of an oppressed group-identity cannot be the only
explanation for his actions. Up to this point we have only alluded to
Sephiroth’s motivations: his denial regarding, and his avoidance of confronting
his true paternity, ‘My father... What does it matter...? All right, let's go’.
Not only is Sephiroth disgusted at the mere notion of his father, but also,
like the eponymous hero of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, seems to be
disgusted at the idea of female reproduction. This can be seen from the design
of the room in the Nibelheim reactor where we learn about Hojo’s scientific
experiments. The room closely resembles a womb, replete with red walls
resembling the endometrium, metallic eggs resembling ovaries or ova, and
gigantic pipes resembling fallopian tubes or blood vessels. In this room, Sephiroth
asks ‘Was I created this way too? Am I the same as all these monsters......?’ Recall
that Sephiroth appears to be oblivious of his human mother’s true identity (i.e.
Lucretia) for the entire duration of the game. He is in ignorance regarding his
own motherhood, and his only encounter with something resembling the facts of childbearing
triggers the beginning of his madness: there is brief CG in which a humanoid
monster is born from one of the metal eggs. Immediately after this scene, Cloud recalls
Sephiroth asking ‘Am I...... human?’ At first glance, it appears that
Sephiroth’s unease results from the idea of being created in a giant test-tube
like one of Hojo’s monsters. But, given what we have just pointed out, it seems
equally likely that Sephiroth’s problem is not that he is a monster, but that he
cannot bring himself state the answer to his own question: ‘Am I...... human?’
- yes, human, all too human. As Cloud adds, ‘I didn't quite understand
what Sephiroth was saying at that time.’ Even more unsettling is that
the monster we see being born does not appear threatening, but closely
resembles a human infant (purple, curled-up and shrieking) whilst being the
size of an adult. Sephiroth’s personal vulnerability, his shame regarding what
he is and where he comes from, is thus externalised in the guise of this
monster. With these observations in mind, it is no surprise that Sephiroth
would choose to identify an alien life form, Jenova, (Je-NO-va) a being lacking
any real characteristics – as his mother, rather than the appalling
scene witnessed in the Nibelheim reactor. Once again, here, FF7s reference to
the negative theology of kabbalah in the character’s names takes on deeper
significance. Sephiroth’s inability to affirm that he is made of flesh, blood
and all the other slime that makes up a living body leads him to the negative
theology of himself. The chosen one is only what he is by virtue of what he is
not – or rather, what he refuses to acknowledge himself to be.
The
case of Sephiroth’s mistaken identity (i.e. his belief that he is the son of
the “new god” Jenova, preferring to ignore or forget his flawed, human parents,
Lucretia and Hojo) is a metaphor for the profound spiritual mistake
which defines messianism: to define the self only in terms of what one
is not (i.e. a normal human, ‘you stupid people’); only in terms of what
one is missing (i.e., omnipotence ‘to be reborn as a 'God' to rule over every
soul’); only in terms of what has been taken away (the promised land). That
is to say, according to FF7, messianism is quintessentially
reactionary. Cloud learns this only too late, only coming to terms with who
he really is having basically destroyed the world; Sephiroth does not learn
at all.
But
it is important to realise that FF7 is not dealing in blunt
condemnations – which would be merely another reactionary gesture (thou
shalt not…).
Just
as in the case of Kabbalah and other religious strands in western history,
messianism appears in FF7 at the most desperate time. It was during the exile
from Israel, during the roman occupations, during the various pogroms in
medieval Europe that messianism reappeared as a cultural force among the Jews. Likewise,
in the universe of FF7, it was when Sephiroth (incorrectly) understood
the crime against him, and understood himself as the last remaining member of a
persecuted race, that his sense of a messianic calling came upon him. It is only
at this point that he sets out to achieve Jenova’s reunion, and to exact his apocalyptic
revenge against the human race. In FF7 then, Sephiroth’s way of becoming “the
One”, of making everyone else be at-one with him as their “new God” is a
terrible case of mistaken identity. On one level, this is because Sephiroth is
not who he thinks he is, (at least to begin with – he states that he has
surpassed the ancients during the temple scene, implying his non-identity with
them. At that stage, it seems that Sephiroth has simply lost any idea of his
identity, other than his desire for revenge). On another level, this is because
there is no “chosen One” – certainly not the man named Sephiroth.
[1] Nokso-Koivisto,
Inka. "Microcosm-macrocosm analogy in Rasāʾil Ikhwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ and certain
related texts." PhD diss., Ph. D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2014.
P.26.
[2] Tirosh-Samuelson,
Hava, and Frederick E. Greenspahn. "Gender in Jewish
mysticism." Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: new insights and
scholarship (2011): 191-230.
[3]
See Resonant Arc’s youtube video essay on FF7 and Christopher Nolan’s The
Prestige – (sorry don’t have the link just now!)
[4] Feldman,
Fern. "Gender and Indeterminacy in Jewish Mystical
Imagery." Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and
Questions from Queer Studies (2018): 199.
[5] Pérez,
Joseph History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
Translated by Hochroth, Lysa. (University of Illinois Press 2007).
[6] Martin,
John Jeffries. A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the
Making of the Modern World. Yale University Press, 2022. 34.
