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syzygyzip · 5 years

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Solaire is the Sandworm and Other Apocrypha

What follows is an essay about Knight Solaire, a character from Dark Souls 1. The essay discusses his metatextual influence, his symbolic import, and a few theories about his supposed fate in Dark Souls 3.

On the Nature of Headcanon Canon as a concept adopts different rules when it comes to videogames. More concretely than in other artforms, the content of the game changes according to its witness. You can’t account for another person’s playthrough, so you are obligated to trust their story—within reason. A player can tell you that they beat a boss without taking a single hit. That’s reasonable. A player can say that they saw an enemy clip through a wall, placing it in an otherwise empty environment. Could be true, might want to see footage, but reasonable. Further out, a player can tell you that a completely unprecedented game-object appeared out of nowhere, started flying around and corrupting objects. This is unlikely, but, like some crytptozoological encounter, could be explained away by the witness’ misapprehension (maybe a hacker invades the game and thwarts the rules).

Just like witnessing the mothman or other spectral phenomena in real life, the person’s impression of the event is real. To borrow Jung’s term, it is a subjective fact of the psyche. Because it is “of the psyche,” it describes the psyche.

Physical is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be deemed utterly incredible. Beliefs of this kind are psychic facts which cannot be contested and need no proof.

[…] The psyche is an autonomous factor, and religious statements are psychic confessions which in the last resort are based on unconscious, i.e., on transcendental processes.” (Jung, Carl pars. 553-555).

Unusual things will happen in games, and still more unusual things will be perceived to happen. What happens “off-screen” in the game world has no true authority, not even from the developers, because every player acts as a co-author. Some fan theories are formed by mentally structuring objects and events. Other fan theories seem to spring forth fully formed from the inky off-screen unconscious; in this case, for the theorist it feels more like a discovery than a construction. But most headcanons are a composite. Theories and headcanons are also informed by the meta-culture—by what a game and its characters have become in the eyes of “the community.” Black Iron Tarkus, for instance, has no lines of dialogue in any game, but has developed a personality and prestige from his interpretation by the fandom. Such occurrences are almost a matter of course. Games, especially when they reach franchise-level popularity, spawn stories and memes. The game reveals content not programmed by its developers. It is doubtful that anyone at FromSoft foresaw Tarkus’ fandom. Nor would any on the staff have guessed that a few discrete game items (Giant’s Armor, Havel’s Ring, the Mask of the Father, etc) would cohere into a folk hero called Giant Dad. I say “folk hero,” though he is a scourge to many. This “character,” who is really just an exploitative blend of game mechanics, would be made, remade, imitated, elevated to memetic and then iconic status. Most other archetypes in Dark Souls are divided into their attributes: Helm of Artorias, Sword of Artorias, etc. Giant Dad is the reverse: he is constellated by his attributes; none of them alone hold his pneuma.

The Knight Solaire is more famous than either of these figures. Like Artorias, he is a character specifically designed to appeal and to exist in relation to; and yet like Giant Dad, he is a fan-fueled nexus of meme. Beyond both of these capacities is the degree to which he emanates himself beyond the franchise. His catchphrases “Praise the Sun!” and “jolly cooperation” have taken on a life outside of Dark Souls—a scope of renown unreached by Giant Dad. Especially noteworthy is his corresponding emoticon \[T]/ How many pop cultural icons can be summed up in 5 pieces of unicode? He has also been coagulated into an Amiibo, which is another ontologically ambiguous prestige, occupying a strange corner between meatspace, the virtual, and the symbolic apparatus of capitalism. But he is not quite so easily as commodified, as a Squid Kid or an Isabelle. He is not moe like they are. He does not have a face. But that is not say he is featureless: he has a personality and a mystique that coheres throughout his diegetic presence, his cross-cultural memetic tendrils, and his various costumes in headcanon. What force accounts for this coherence? No archetype can be summed up into a single definition or personality, but the style by which they draw attributes and myths around them allows us some understanding.

The Knight of the Sun When encountered in Dark Souls 1, the character of Solaire presents a rare locus of optimism. He is standing in the sunlight, staring into the sky in quiet appreciation. He is immediately friendly and encouraging to the player, and gives them the tool of “jolly cooperation.”

I want to emphasize how much Solaire’s demeanor stands out in the milieu. Though he is encountered at an early point, the game has already introduced the player to an extremely dismal and unforgiving world. They have likely met many overpowering obstacles and dejected NPCs, and begun to realize how scarce is the refuge of the bonfire. It doesn’t take much exposure to Lordran to take on its infectious loneliness. Solaire’s optimism cuts through this bleak fog like a lighthouse, and he literally gives the player the key to online collaboration. From another gameplay standpoint, consider how the player has become conditioned to dark corners, to ambushes, and fatal surprises; to visually scouring the environment like a rat, wary of predators and keen to spot a glowing treasure. For a moment, Solaire stops the desperate scavenging to direct your attention to the skybox. These contemplative silences have become a signature of the Souls series, but this is perhaps the first directed instance.

This is to say that Solaire is the first personification of goodwill that the player meets, so early into their journey, and is thus easily wrapped up into that symbolism. As the player’s relationship to the world takes on new dimensions (not simply new game areas, but entirely new spheres: online play, community discourse, lorekeeping), the symbol of Solaire follows them. In online play, he pops up as someone’s cosplay—and spectacularly, most of these sunbros, these independent actors, will reflect his behavior accurately! In Souls communities, Solaire is almost omnipresent, as people will post his slogan or his emoticon as a way of communicating affirmation, respect, or pure joy. There are other things to like about Solaire, like the fact that he is relatively powerful as an ally in boss fights, that he has the cool lightning move, or that it is revealed his armor is “average,” and that his strength comes from some inner source. Another element that should not be underestimated is the psychological potency of his implicit longing for a father. It goes without saying that the motif of the absent father has been especially compelling in the 21st century, ubiquitous in mass media, and often exploited by advertisers, etc. Beyond that, Solaire is searching “for his Sun,” an object which can be interpreted countless ways; suffice it to say it is a timeless and recognizable symbol of purpose and wholeness.

For all these reasons and more, Solaire is an easy point of projection for the player. He is an image both relatable and aspirational; he is average and exceptional. He is savvy, strong, and kind, and never in hyperbolic measure. He realistically represents a player’s best traits. The quality of his goodness is unspecific and broad; it becomes an anchor point for any virtue a player may value, as can be seen in the varied mutations he takes on in the subculture, becoming in turn funkier, wiser, more heroic. This trait of mutability, in itself, is generous! In a game that is by now famous for its therapeutic value in treating depression, Solaire’s influence should not be disregarded. Here is an illustrative example of the potential effect of Solaire on a player, posted to reddit by user unsuppressedYay:

Like most, when I was playing Dark Souls, I was in a very bad time of my life (which was incidentally only a couple months ago). I was at a college that I hated, with roommates who were not accepting of me, and many friends who had stopped hanging out with me. The only joy I would have is going home on the weekends, playing Dark Souls until I accomplished something and then going out to see my friends from back home. In this dark time i had isolated myself from most people during the week and was lonely and didn’t accomplished much, as such my grades also suffered. it was a bad time.

By playing dark souls, I felt accomplishment after getting through a particularly tough area or beating a boss. It gave me a reason to go on, that I would continue in the doomed world of lordran where i had to reach a fire with no good ending. It gave me encouragement to continue in my own life and applying to a different college and get my life back on track.

So to the point. I had accidentally spoiled what happened to Solaire. but I was still unable to stop it. I thought the chaos bugs were the big bugs in the lava after lost izalith. I felt so guilty and like I actually lost someone I cared about. I felt the obligation to wear his armor until the very end of the game. It made things significantly harder because of how weak it was compared to normal armor, but I stuck with it. The item description from the armor was something along the lines of saying that Solaire had no special power or magic, like we did. He made the armor himself, and was strong through his dedication and work ethic and never willing to give up to get his sun. So thanks Dark Souls and thanks Solaire for reminding me that optimism is the best way to go about things.

tl;dr cheesy story about dark souls helping me get through tough time, and feeling obligation to beat the game with solaires armor due to his wonderful optimism, and guilt over his death.

Even if a player doesn’t specifically don Solaire’s armor in tribute, they likely integrate some aspect of his character in other ways. It can be as simple as performing the Praise the Sun gesture before a boss or upon victory. Miraculously, the gesture conveys the attitude quite plainly. The phrase “what happened to Solaire” alludes to the tragic fate that befalls him if the player does not intervene: he goes hollow in Lost Izalith, loses his enthusiasm and direction, and apparently mistakes a Chaos Bug for the sun which he seeks. After this point he will be hostile to the player, and will be wearing the cursed thing upon his head. This piece of headgear, formed from the body of a chaos bug, emits a lighted orb resembling the sun. If the player follows an arcane route through the game, they can avoid this outcome, and bring Solaire as a helpful ally in the final fight against Lord Gwyn.

Solaire as Gwyn’s Son For a long time, the battle at the immemorial kiln seemed like a fitting resolution to Solaire’s arc, as Gwyn was assumed to be his estranged father. Complementing Solaire’s recognition of an affinity between the Sun and the Father, we are told that Gwyn had a long-lost firstborn son. While essentially disproved by the apparent revelation of Gwyn’s actual first-born in Dark Souls 3, this lore speculation continues to live on in the imagination of the Souls community. It remains as another fact of the psyche, and thereby further illuminates the nature of Solaire. To understand why this is significant, we have to go a little bit into the symbolism of the Sun. You may be surprised to hear that people have been aware of the Sun for a long time now, and it has accrued significations far too numerous to list in full. So we will just mention a few of its rays, those that coincide with Solaire’s virtues: generosity, joviality, light, warmth, and cooperation. It also symbolizes the gift of life, vitality, will, and essence. Then there is that important attribute: obviousness; there is simply no denying the Sun in the sky, as it illuminates everything around you, and your planet circles it incessantly. But this principle of “apparentness” follows the sun to its cultural correspondences, like the lion, who is known to be named Leo. Which chakra does the sun relate to? Why, the solar plexus. Guess which metal the Sun corresponds to. It’s gold. You don’t have to be an occultist or a psychologist to notice the sun’s dignitaries: they have a way of exuding themselves. So it is with the conspicuously named Knight Solaire and his undeniable presence. It is simply one of his attributes: the ability to beam out from the Souls world, through the metatext, and into broader strata of culture.

The solar principle is also a consciousness principle. To “shed light” upon something is to become conscious of it. Thus the Sun describes both the ego and the Self (the inner image of God). The ego can be thought of as a low-res isomorphism of the Self, or as an inner, inextinguishable “divine spark.” It seems that this spark is the source from which Solaire derives his boundless optimism. Solaire ambivalently identifies with the Sun, and marvels at it outside himself, terming it as a “magnificent father.” Though he is a source of light for the player, he humbles himself before the “gross incandescence” of some higher power. This ego-Self dynamic, so essential to human experience, triggers a (conscious or unconscious) question of reconciliation. So players may wonder, “Who is the father of Solaire? To whom does he defer?” and the natural affinities between Solaire and Gwyn present themselves. Aside from the fact that it is later contradicted, this genealogy is also simply too concrete and anthropocentric to satisfy the greater mystery. The Solaire-Gwyn interpretation remains as a psychological fact, but it is just the beginning. It is the exoteric story, revealed to players of DS1 not as deception, but as an inaugural step for constellating a much more complex archetype. Now that we have taken a good look about how well the figure of Solaire invites a player’s projections, we will move on to a few other lore theories, far stranger and more infamous.

Solaire Has Become a Worm Who was Knight Solaire and what became of him? Some say he is the great Carthus Sandworm, writhing around the Smoldering Lake in the ruins of Hell. While apparently originally suggested in earnest, the Sandworm story has come to be known as a meme theory. As we have discussed, a meme won’t exist if it’s not compelling on some level.

Here is the apocryphal myth as commonly understood. Canonically the player fails to save Solaire after he wanders into Lost Izalith in search of his Sun. He discovers the Chaos Bug (or slays it and discovers its corpse), and mistakes its gentle glow for his personal sun. Worn as headgear, it becomes the Sunlight Maggot, a “loathsome parasite” that is “completely immobile, yet still lives.” Solaire goes hollow, losing his identity and sense of purpose. He despairs. We don’t know whether the parasite produces this abject condition in Solaire, or whether it is symptomatic, or coincidental. Therefore speculation begins here. Assuming the player does not destroy the mad Solaire, he wanders around the underworld for a very long time. As the years go by the vast hellscape of what was once Izalith disintegrates. Its army of demons becomes hills of corpses. The land itself is now nothing more than a small maze of ruins, and a warm puddle—the so-called “Smouldering Lake.” During this time, the theory suggests, the parasite has completely consumed Solaire, turning him into the “Carthus Sandworm” an enormous, Dune-esque burrowing worm that spits lightning.

So because Solaire was overtaken by a Chaos Bug, it is assumed he never left Carthus and became the worm. The further justification(?) for this theory is as follows. The worm spits lightning as Solaire does. The worm drops Lightning Stake, a miracle that mentions lost dragon slayers, who are affiliated with Warriors of Sunlight and thus Solaire. The worm also has human appendages sticking out from its body, and drops an undead bone shard, which are seen as clues that the worm was once human. (It is also suggested by some that Solaire’s might and indefatigable nature are the reason that he was not consumed by the parasite, but instead transformed into an enormous creature. But this point is often glossed over in the meme-theory variant.)

We can see that the diegetic evidence upon which the case for Solaire-as-Worm rests is rather thin. So what accounts for its popularity? Why does it make some kind of intuitive sense? Why does it generate enough interest to be passed around, albeit ironically? Let’s examine the origin point of the story: Solaire venturing into Lost Izalith and losing his mind to a Chaos Bug. The story of a solar hero venturing into the underworld has—once again—existed for as long as people have been staring at the sun. Each day the Sun goes down, and comes up again reborn. Psychologically, the descent into the underworld symbolizes the journey of the ego into the unconscious. The principle risk of this journey is possession by the contents therein; re-absorption into a state of dependent unconsciousness. For this reason among others, it is associated with the great and destructive Mother in her negative aspect. The motifs of “the devouring mother” and the “belly of the whale” are likely familiar to most people. The loss of a sense of a separate self is a much-feared thing, and this story arises perennially and across cultures. Izalith too is full of (negative) Mother imagery, with the mother of pyromancy at the center, portrayed as a small bug, not dissimilar from the Sunlight Maggot which consumes Solaire. We should of course not reduce the Mother to some Freudian positivism. She is called the Mother because she represents the matrix of the world, which engenders, sustains, and decays all forms. In her fullness she is the divine feminine principle. Her fearsome aspects, such as the devouring mother, are constellated by the ego’s fears and rejections. The mother is the first being from which an infant must differentiate itself, and so there is this necessary period in which the mother becomes the abject, the locus of all that is disavowed and detested. When stories tell us about “slaying the dragon,” it is not about conquering the feminine, or defeating chaos; it is about overcoming a false view of the Divine Mother born of fear and prejudice. It is this view, cohered into a monster, that must be slain, as the Chosen Undead does in Izalith in Dark Souls 1. According to tradition, how is this accomplished? In psychological terms:

The slaying of the mother and identification with the father-god go together. If, through active incest, the hero penetrates into the dark, maternal, chthonic side, he can only do so by virtue of his kinship with “heaven,” his filiation to God. By hacking his way out of the darkness he is reborn as the hero in the image of God, but, at the same time as the son of […] the regenerative Good Mother. (Neumann 165)

The “father” in this case corresponds to the solar principles of Logos, order, and law. Swords and lightning-strikes, Solaire’s preferred tools, refer to the capacities of discernment and insight necessary for differentiation. This identification/alliance with the father in this task is only temporary, for the Father too must be destroyed: he is the old order, the ego deteriorating into an oppressive and petty tyrant. This is why Gwyn is underwhelming and ailing when we find him. So it appears that saving Solaire, and bringing him to defeat Gwyn, is a relatively psychologically healthy outcome. That is—if Solaire is the new ego!! But think about it: when playing a game, is it not the player-character who is most representative of the ego? It is out of the Chosen Undead’s eyes that we see, it is their actions we control, not Solaire’s. We have already established that for many players, Solaire is an ideal image, whose full potential is necessarily unknown. Does this mean that Solaire is meant to be abandoned here? Is he, like Gwyn, an outdated self-conception that must be discarded so that something new can be born? The moral judgment of this situation is more complicated than it first appears.

Let’s look at the steps one must take in order to save Solaire: one must join the Chaos Servant covenant and collect humanity for the “Fair Lady.” This witch of chaos is a pale and deteriorating spider-woman meshed into the wall of her lair. She speaks a language incomprehensible to the player, unless a special ring is worn, which reveals that she mistakes the player for her sister. If she is given a whopping 30 humanity, the Chosen Undead rises to a rank of prestige in her organization, and a special door opens which allows passage to the site of Solaire’s fall. This is the only way to arrive at the scene and destroy the bug before Solaire finds it. So the key, in essence, is offering your humanity to a mysterious dying witch over and over again. Or, as reddit user JotaBarra puts it:

To save Solaire of Astora you have to give 30 humanity to someone who you don't know, that doesn't understand you and the only thing you know is that she put herself in pain trying to fix something that she doesn't did. If you help her, the games give you the opportunity to save your friend. The only way to save Solaire is by being like him. Friendship is exactly like that. You help the only one that help you everytime he can. He will fight alongside with you against the final enemy. It represent what a relationship is. We don't build relationship with our direct actions but with what the actions mean. You dont help directly to your friend, but you do what he could've do for you.

This interpretation makes a good point about how it is necessary to become Solaire, to take on his attributes, in order to save him. Does this therefore mean that by the time the two of you get to Gwyn, you are the same person? Or were you the same person all along, and Solaire was just projected into the external environment, just as he both embodies the sun and seeks it outside himself? That light, whether the anglerfish lamp of the Sunlight Maggot or the Sun itself, compels the body forward, because that compulsion is the Sun.

Specifically, compulsion is the Sun in its chthonic state. It is synonymous with the ever-burning fuel of sulfur, replete throughout the realms of hell.

Lost Izalith, the Hell of Dark Souls, has been reduced to very little in Dark Souls 3. It appears quite plainly that the kingdom has deteriorated. What were once oceans of lava is now a knee-high lake of simmering water. However, among the ruins and heaps of demon corpses, there is indication that new life is growing. Roots of world trees coil around the stone and new forms of demons are singing living flames into being. Most significantly, there is also the presence of crabs, which are a timeless symbol of birth, and present at the other two places of world-regeneration in Dark Souls 3 (the forest and the painting). Beneath the desolate surface of Smouldering Lake, there is the beating heart of new life.

It is on the surface that the pseudo-Solaire worm confronts us. It could be that it is protective of this nest, or maybe it is a crude image of the unborn life in incubation within. The fact that it is coiled here, in a pool of water at the base of the world, suggests the kundalini serpent. In psychology and metaphysics, the kundalini is the libidinous upward force catalyzed by the primal energy (shakti) at the base of the spine. Alongside its physiological manifestation, the rising serpent/worm is one of the oldest mythological motifs:

The Gnostics related the serpent to the mysterious energy of the primordial waters symbolized in the waves of the undulating serpent as well as the stirrings within the serpentine spinal cord of man. The stirrings surface from the abyss of the unconscious, sometimes unexpectedly and with peremptory and terrible effects. (Valborg)

Its undulating path upwards is called “The Serpent’s Path” as it traces a parabolic shape as it climbs to ever-higher degrees of refinement (this is what the player does, you may recall). This journey of upward undulation, often felt by the individual as an electric current, is sometimes preceded by the “Lightning Flash,” the original impetus, which strikes downward from the crown to the lowest point, thus awakening the serpent, which makes its ascent. So these images come together quite conveniently in the figure of this lightning-spewing sandworm. You may remember that the worm drops “Lightning Stake”; not some other miracle, but the one that forces lightning down upon the earth. To see this electric serpent coiled up within a hot, subterranean chamber teeming with life—it is hard to imagine a more direct depiction of the kundalini.

We have talked about Solaire as a symbol of the Self, that was at one time appropriate but now needs to be refined, and it is therefore appropriate that he should find himself consumed in the flames of the underworld. The fiery hells of Buddhism are sites of purification; the fire that rages and torments the victim is their own unbridled affects, but they eventually exhaust themselves. What remains after is purified ash, synonymous with the “white foliated Earth” of the alchemists. It is this type of “environment” in which the “gold”—the personality—should be sown, in order to reach its potential. This is assumedly what has already happened to the Ashen One of Dark Souls 3, given their title and the fact that they have arisen from ash; it also seems to be descriptive of the process at hand for the kingdom of Lothric.

It’s easy to imagine that players might unconsciously project the image of Solaire’s rebirth onto this worm. For reasons related to Solaire’s story, as previously discussed, and for these perennial myths. At another point in the journey, the player is also confronted with Rosaria, the Mother of Rebirth, who “respecs” people—reallocates their stats and qualities. The only risk this refinement brings is that the person may become a worm! A few casualties of this process are seen or implied elsewhere in the game. These “mangrubs” are quite revolting, and yet at least a few are linked to the highest divinity. This should not surprise us:

Typical of the paradoxical imagery of the unconscious, the despicable worm can turn into the supreme value. Thus the messiah is equated with a worm in the messianic Psalm 22, verse 6: ‘But I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.’ (Edinger AoP 158)

For the full renewal of the image of the Self, it is necessary that the old king(/sun) dies. The body decays, and at its most revolting, it becomes the bed and the feast of maggots. Because Smouldering Lake is beneath the Catacombs, it can be said to be taking place within the body within the grave. The entire scene can be read as allegory of the processes within the body in the midst of its resurrection. The “messiah” here is invoked because Christ is another euphemism for the Self. And just as the dead king’s body is diffused into the bellies of the maggots, so too does Christ’s flesh become the object of consumption during the Eucharist. This takes us conveniently into our next bizarre fan theory.

Solaire Has Become Soup Slightly more arcane than the theory of Solaire’s transfiguration into a worm, is the notion of his transubstantiation into the Estus Soup, which is found in a few cauldrons throughout Lothric. The justification for this theory was handily summarized on a reddit by a now-deleted user:

Consider the room you get the sunbro badge in undead settlement. It also contains an estus soup bowl...

The sunbro badge is found on a device for dismembering corpses. We know this becasue we see the same device being used to cut up bodies later in the undead settlement just before the stairs down to the lower area with the ravine

The sunbro badge is simply a rag of cloth sitting on the device, which heavily implies that a sunbro was cut up on this device and his badge was left over as a part of the cutting up process

Underneath the cutting up device are an absolute ton of small bowls, receptacles to contain fluid. What fluid will the cutting up device produce? blood and human bodily fluid.

These same bowls can be seen all around the main estus soup pot....

The blood of the dismembered sunbros/other undead is extracted in the cutting process into the small bowls. These bowls are then take to the main pot and their essences poured into the main soup pot which is boiled and the estus fluid is extracted from the blood of the chopped up sunbros. This is what forms the radiant estus soup.

The player is in some sense conditioned to think this, because the entire Undead Settlement is oriented around the disposal of corpses. Moreover, Estus Soup is found at two more places, one of which holds Solaire’s talisman, and the other near paintings of Gwynevere (saint of the sunbros). Now, the more reasonable interpretation of the presence of these Sunlight artifacts near Estus Soup is that Siegward, who is later shown to be the one concocting the soup, leaves them behind in his absent-mindedness. Siegward’s attitude and behavior are very reflective of the “jolly cooperation” ethos, and thus we naturally assume that he is affiliated with the Warriors of Sunlight.

This, however, does not disprove that the Estus Soup is Solaire! Not to say that Solaire was butchered by Siegward, and bled into the soup via the grisly method described above; rather it is more likely that a faithful Warrior of Sunlight has consecrated this special drink in a manner similar to the Christian Eucharist. To understand the concept of the Eucharist, here is an excerpt from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

The cup of prayer contains wine and contains water, being established as a representation of the blood over which thanksgiving is offered. And it is full of the holy spirit, and belongs entirely to the perfect human being. Whenever we drink it we take unto ourselves the perfect human being. The living water is a body.” (Gnostic scriptures p347)

In other words, “the Eucharistic blood represented the Soul of Christ.” (Jung & von Franz 93). The fact that “the conception of blood as soul prevailed in the middle ages,”(ibid. 93) is visually quoted by Dark Souls periodically, and further prepares the player to respond to such symbolic signaling within this fantasy setting.

Now, Solaire as a Christ figure who becomes the subject of a Lothric Eucharist is probably not a theory that anyone would thread together without the specific intent of performing a Christian reading of Dark Souls. The reason that I discuss it now is because the existence of the Solaire-as-soup theory seems to have arrived at a similar situation unconsciously, and slightly rephrased into a secular materialist framework (more palatable to the conscious mind). We have examined how Solaire is an uncommonly strong draw for projections of the player’s better nature. It is also a fact of our world that certain Christian concepts—such as Christ representing a fully realized being to whom we should aspire, or the mysteries of the Eucharist—are present in the background of the unconscious. These stories and motifs were so ubiquitous for so long in the western world, that even if we live fully secular lives, this material continues to radiate its influence through the thinnest, unassuming little cracks in our speech, our aesthetics, and our stories.

So without any intention on the part of the player, their experience of the character Solaire receives some influence from the Christian world. This effect is aided by a few other elements. There is his resemblance to common depictions of knights from the Crusades, whose defining associations are Christianity and the fact that they were seeking something. Of course we also have the fact of his signature gesture which is similar to the pose of the crucified Christ. This essay has already described this gesture’s prominent contribution to the memetic potency of Solaire, but it bears mentioning that if the player joins this covenant, they perform the gesture automatically upon being summoned—any active sunbro is quite literally forced into imitating this pose! And of course, a third reason for this unconscious association of Christ and Solaire is the factor of the mysterious and divine parentage.

Which is Canon? So of these two fringe headcanons, which is the more valid? Is Solaire a worm or is he soup? Taking anthropology into account, we must recognize that the death and resurrection of the Sun-god naturally predates Christ, and Christian myths are often studied in that context. It is just as natural to see Solaire as a personification of the Sun, of goodwill, or of the Logos … although Christ also covers that ground. Whatever the case may be, the dismemberment and consumption of this embodied principle seems to be a common feature of these stories. Both the worms who feed on the king’s corpse, and the Eucharistic wine/blood, are images of this concept—and perhaps both images are necessary. The feast of the worms is the profane image, and the Eucharist is the sacred and civil version. After all, for the dissemination of this quality of consciousness to be complete, it must extend to every level. Edinger gives us another broad summary of the concept:

[The Golden Man] represents the microcosmos or monas, the initial matter, which also contains the goal of the work. His dismemberment signifies a new conscious ordering of his initial chaotic nature.

It is difficult to consider terms like “initial matter” and appreciate the fullness of the concept. In nitpicking over the details of the specific images, we may begin to lose sight of the importance and universality of the basic story. This is why it is so important that there are multiple histories, multiple headcanons. If Solaire was only the worm, or only the soup, he would be less complete and less adequate as a symbol. And there are many headcanons besides these, of course; they merely represent two aggregations with a mythologically fertile tension between them. By the incredible multivalence of the Sun’s many arms, he means something different and individual to each player.

And speaking of the “goal of the work.” The return of the Sun in the morning is not considered a triumph merely because it has survived. Withstanding the night in itself is hardly an achievement! It is a triumph because something has been earned in the descent, and the same is true of the story of Christ’s incarnation. When the Sun-god rises again, something has been purified, refined, or to use the preferred Christian term, redeemed. The personal stories of players also seem to follow this trajectory. Dark Souls doesn’t treat depression simply because players are enduring its difficulty, it’s because some special quality of attention is polished through their struggles. We ought also to remember that Solaire willingly became Undead so he could visit Lordran and find his own Sun. The descent into incarnation for the purpose of refinement is a journey that should only be made consciously, with optimism and good cheer, for that is the Sun’s native condition.

Edinger, Edward. Anatomy of the Psyche. Open Court Publishing Company, 1985. Jung, Carl. Psychology and Religion: East and West. Princeton University Press, 1969. Jung, Emma & Marie-Louise von Franz. The Grail Legend. Sigo Press, 1980. Layton, Bentley, ed. The Gnostic Scriptures. Yale University Press, 1995 Neumann, Eric. The Origins and History of Consciousness. Bollingen Foundation, 1954. Valborg, Helen. Great Symbols Series: the Serpent. Theosophy Trust, 2013.

Solaire is Pump-a-Rum Actually, you are this fledgling.

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