The Genshin in Star Rail
Last time I talked about how Star Rail was just a Genshin Crossover.
...
No. No I didn't. You guys can sit back in your seats. Sorry about making you spit out your drinks.
But this time I am going to talk about how it is just a Genshin Crossover!
Well in so far as it has one very specific element that I think miHoYo recycled from their research into the theme for Genshin. (somebody's still reading after all that cringe right?)
I'm speaking about the Aeons. Now if you don't play Genshin or you didn't really follow Genshin's lore don't worry because the term and the specifics aren't ever mentioned in Genshin either. We know about them only because it's been well established that Genshin was developed with great inspiration from an ancient form of Christianity called Gnosticism.
Anyway the Gnostics created their own narrative on Judeo-Christian lore. Instead of God creating the Earth in seven days and placing the humans into Eden with the rule to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge this version of God is split into a true god and a lesser god. It's the lesser god that created Earth and wanted to prevent humans from eating the fruit from the tree. The true god is an ineffable being that comprises everything in creation. And the Aeons come from this and supercede the Earth-making god.
Now the important point for today's topic is how Aeons are created in Gnosticism. All Aeons are born in pairs called dyads. As beings just a step under a god that's meant to represent everything, these guys are made as opposing fundamental concepts like day and night.
So what do we have in Star Rail? Qlipoth the Preservation whose followers want to protect their worlds against destruction aka Nanook the Destruction. We also have Nous the Erudition who means to preserve knowledge opposing Mythus the Enigmata who wants to destroy all knowledge and of course most recently there's Yaoshi the Abundance who preserves life opposed by Lan the Hunt that eliminates all of Yaoshi's creations.
Additionally though it isn't as pronounced in Gnosticism these Aeons are also produced in diminishing dyads with higher valued concepts being born earlier and later Aeons being seen in less regard. For example the lowest Aeon Sophia is the one that makes the mistake of creating the lesser god and then also becomes the only Aeon to fall which renames her the Achamoth.
In Star Rail this was explained by Kafka.
And then there's a part about the Aeons that I don't think is reflected by the real world religion.
They couldn't give a flying Fragmentum about the people devoted to their Paths. Actually you can look up some of their names and for example Qlipoth is actually a term in Hebrew that means shell and is used to describe eldritch horrors in Judaism.
But that's its own topic so I'll get to that some other time.
Posted Jun 4, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC