The God Hand’s end goal is one of the great mysteries still unsolved in Berserk. Maybe the greatest one left? The discussions that followed episode 358 made it clear people had an appetite for it, so I decided to make a thread to lay out what I think about it. And then I left it half-finished for several months... But hey, at least now it’s done!
Order vs Chaos
As some of my posts here and there can attest, my belief has been for years that Berserk would culminate in a struggle opposing humans and human-based magic to the elemental, primeval world. This can be summed up as a very classical theme in the fantasy genre: order versus chaos. The ancient world was chaotic, as the Great Gurus have taught us. It was humans who brought order to the world, led by the great emperor Gaiseric. But something went wrong, and Gaiseric’s empire crumbled. Now the world is in chaos again, and a second empire is being born… but things are different. Dark forces are behind it. I’m talking about the God Hand of course, and about its master, the Idea of Evil.
Again, for years now I’ve been talking about their great scheme, their ultimate goal. I believe that goal is control. Total control over the world and over mankind. The principle of causality would be absolute. Humans would be governed by a finite amount of urges (over which individual members of the God Hand have dominion) and would act according to them in expected, predictable ways. That is a world of perfect order. A world where everything follows a specific reason and chance plays no role. Where the suffering of men is rational, logical, explainable. And where there is no free will.
Magic, the art of knowing the world and exerting power over it
But why would this be at odds with the astral world? How are trolls a problem for the God Hand? Well, it’s not just trolls. There’s a myriad of astral creatures like them, of all sorts and full of quirks, and then there’s elves, and elemental spirits like those Schierke summon, and the four elemental kings of the world. And magic users. Because from this great chaos, at some point in time, humans learned how to use elemental magic. It was likely a slow, iterative process. It allowed humans to better understand the world and therefore to find ways to make their lives better (including by defending themselves against hostile astral creatures). And I believe this is completely at odds with what the Idea of Evil and its minions want to achieve.
The perfect example of what that process of understanding can do was offered to us through Farnese’s journey. She was a scared and scarred young woman, driven down a dark path by her life and surroundings. But her encounter with Guts, a free spirit if there ever was one, threw her completely off course. She abandoned the façade she’d created over the years and started a painful journey of real personal growth. And eventually, she started learning magic, as she states herself: so that the light of reason would illuminate the darkness of the unknown.
Now, there are practical reasons we can invoke for why the God Hand wouldn’t want magic users around. For one thing because they could harm them or counter their plans. But if you think a little deeper, you’ll find that they also pose a threat because of their knowledge. They know how the world works, and that is very dangerous to the God Hand. But it goes deeper still. That knowledge and the power gained from the pursuit of magic give humans agency over their lives and over the world. It means any person can make a difference. And that is the opposite of what the Idea of Evil wants.
The eradication of astral creatures
After episode 358 I think we can all agree on how the God Hand plans on achieving its goal. It’s again something I’ve been rambling about for years: the eradication of astral beings. There’s a clear vision that was established with Falconia, one of humans having to stick together to survive against the natural world. Griffith is creating a purely human world, with a reformed society closer to a military dictatorship than to the feudal society they had before. That shot of the highway being built felt pretty dreadful to me. You can feel they’re really remaking the world. Making it orderly. Straight roads, well delineated fields and other regions, etc.
And of course, the reason for destroying astral beings is because they are agents of chaos, of unknown to the human world. Even beyond the practice of magic. I mean think for example of every time Guts’ life was changed by Puck. Or even Chich. They are outside the scope of what the God Hand and the Idea of Evil can control. They can provoke people’s minds and give them ideas or even inspire them in ways that the bad guys do not desire. Remember the chaos at Elfhelm when they all started dancing. These creatures are tied to human imagination and creativity, and their disappearance would impoverish mankind as a whole. Beyond just that, we can't forget how Puck basically saved Guts from perdition in the Black Swordsman arc. That is the power of elves.
One thing I need to mention is that there are obvious parallels between what I’m describing and what’s happening in the real world. On one hand, climate change and the way humans have ruined the Earth, on the other, the wave of fascism that’s washed over the world in the last few years and has left almost no country untouched.
Human-based magic vs Elemental magic
All right, with all that being said, I believe there are only two topics left to be addressed: how it all started, and what will happen going forward. Let’s do it chronologically. I’ve mentioned several times in the past how Griffith could be seen as a copycat of Gaiseric created by the Idea of Evil. It was always pretty clear, but Falconia’s design cemented it (since it's basically a revamp of Gaiseric's old city), and now his will to form a second empire further underlines it. I believe this is a hint that Gaiseric’s era was a pivotal moment for the God Hand (duh).
That Void was the first member of the God Hand and the one who caused Gaiseric’s fall is everybody’s basic assumption and I would tend to agree. My belief is that during that time, two schools of thought were at odds in the magical world: the practitioners of elemental, natural magic, and those who delved into “blood magic”. I don’t particularly like the term "blood magic" because it’s a misnomer for what I mean, which is a form of magic based on the power of the human soul. We’ve seen what it can do. The God Hand and the apostles are the result of that particular kind of "evil" magic. It's quite different from elemental magic, both thematically and practically. The specters that haunt Guts at night are a natural manifestation of it. And more recently, we also had the example of the Wicker Man that was filled with dead souls. That contraption, a forbidden device kept in storage by the last surviving magician community in the world, is a pretty big hint about what the ancient world was like, as I said at the time.
A short digression, but I believe Barytes (introduced in episode 346) may be the cosmological element behind the human-based power that the God Hand and the apostles use. It's described as being the element of weight, much tinier than the other four (too small to be seen with the naked eye) and being a sort of binding element for them. It make things heavy, but also darken the skies, causes gloominess or leads to obsessions. This is probably the most speculative part of this post, but I think it's possible that when people are filled with obsessive or negative emotions, Barytes become trapped and concentrated within the human soul. That would be a rational explanation for the "evil power" the bad guys use. And it may also have led to the Vortex's specific shape. Lastly, it's something that is antithetical to elves. Everything checks out.
What happened a thousand years ago
I think Void was a brilliant man and a powerful magic user. Someone who was probably a great ally to Gaiseric at some point. But someone who grew more and more obsessed with his research into the human soul. Was he desperate to find out what lurked deep down at the bottom of the Abyss? I would like to think so. And I believe it was also not too long before that time that the Idea of Evil developed its consciousness. In any case, I think Void was experimenting on people. I believe it’s even possible that he might have created the ceremony of sacrifice and the brand while he was still human, although it would have worked differently. Either way, Gaiseric, counseled by other magic users, banished him. And maybe, deep down in his cell, Void then left his corporeal body and journeyed spiritually deeper than any magician ever had before. Deep, deep… And there he met the God of the Abyss, and was reborn.
But how did Gaiseric’s capital city get annihilated in a single night, you might ask. Well, there are still a number of different possibilities there. For one thing I don’t think Void necessarily just sacrificed everyone there. To lay out some possible scenarios, I believe he might have had a cult of disciples following his ways and who either did sacrifices in his name or sacrificed themselves.
I also believe the capital city might not have been destroyed per se. The tale says it was "wiped off the face of the earth in a single night". Well, Falconia did appear out of nowhere in an instant… Maybe what happened to the capital city was simply the reverse of that. Maybe when the magic users implemented their decision to split the corporeal world and the astral world, to sap the power of the World Spiral Tree, well the world was torn apart. Some things stayed, some disappeared. Maybe the city, being so close to the tree, disappeared into the Astral World along with it. As for the angels, well did they invoke the four elemental kings of the world to help them seal the tree away? Who knows. And yes, I do remember what is at the bottom of the Tower of Rebirth (volume 10, episode 53). But that might not give us the full picture of what happened during that night. The tower itself is certainly a key to those events, however.
Separating the worlds facilitated the rise of the God Hand
Anyway, in the millennia that elapsed between then and now, a new force grew in strength. It’s interesting to think that splitting the world was in part responsible for the God Hand’s ascension to power. Because during that time, the GH all but destroyed the knowledge people had of the old world. The practice of magic all but disappeared. Memories of the astral world faded away and became perceived as mere myths. The doctrine of the Holy See played a key role in that regard in the part of the Berserk world we’re familiar with, and it’s clearly something that was orchestrated by the God Hand. It’s littered with its imagery (falcon, brand, spiral) and has prepared the world for the arrival of its final member.
So now people are powerless against the astral world because they have no knowledge of it and no natural means to deal with it. Their only recourse is the God Hand and its apostles. So what’s next? Well, I think we already have a pretty good idea. Griffith wants to expand. Falconia has moved on beyond artisans and into industry. It’s going to get militarized to the extreme, and I think eventually we’ll see a program where pseudo-apostle soldiers will be manufactured massively to boost the army. It’s only a matter of time. It might be kids from the orphanages or foreigners or criminals. It doesn’t matter. It’ll happen. A fascistic, dehumanized society is being formed. And it's bent on reshaping the world.
Living in the God Hand's world
I’ve said so before, but I think when Guts and the group get to go back, they’ll be treated to a shocking landscape, that of a dramatically transformed world. I picture that glaring disparity between Fantasia and the Falcon Empire as somewhat similar in spirit to how Frodo and Sam found the Shire when they returned from Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. And the “blind white sheep” concept will be stressed as well, with a Falconian society that will likely seem alien to our protagonists. It will be interesting to see in that context whether the people Guts has met in the past will be immune from that “sheepification”. I believe so.
Of course, the bad guys aren’t going to succeed, so we’ll never see their plan fully realized. But I do believe we’ll get some concrete details about it soon enough, while the group is in Elfhelm. All the ingredients are gathered: The Skull Knight, Danan, the Great Gurus, and the Moonlight Boy. The boy, of course, will be the key to defeating the God Hand. I've already talked about this at length elsewhere. Because of his attachment to his parents, and the fact he and Femto inhabit the same corporeal body, he represents a unique weakness that makes Guts & Casca pretty much the only ones who can stop the Falcon of Darkness. How that will go, however, is another story. And there is one last big unknown: what are the other members of the God Hand doing? I think that is also something we might learn about soon enough.
Order vs Chaos
As some of my posts here and there can attest, my belief has been for years that Berserk would culminate in a struggle opposing humans and human-based magic to the elemental, primeval world. This can be summed up as a very classical theme in the fantasy genre: order versus chaos. The ancient world was chaotic, as the Great Gurus have taught us. It was humans who brought order to the world, led by the great emperor Gaiseric. But something went wrong, and Gaiseric’s empire crumbled. Now the world is in chaos again, and a second empire is being born… but things are different. Dark forces are behind it. I’m talking about the God Hand of course, and about its master, the Idea of Evil.
Again, for years now I’ve been talking about their great scheme, their ultimate goal. I believe that goal is control. Total control over the world and over mankind. The principle of causality would be absolute. Humans would be governed by a finite amount of urges (over which individual members of the God Hand have dominion) and would act according to them in expected, predictable ways. That is a world of perfect order. A world where everything follows a specific reason and chance plays no role. Where the suffering of men is rational, logical, explainable. And where there is no free will.
Magic, the art of knowing the world and exerting power over it
But why would this be at odds with the astral world? How are trolls a problem for the God Hand? Well, it’s not just trolls. There’s a myriad of astral creatures like them, of all sorts and full of quirks, and then there’s elves, and elemental spirits like those Schierke summon, and the four elemental kings of the world. And magic users. Because from this great chaos, at some point in time, humans learned how to use elemental magic. It was likely a slow, iterative process. It allowed humans to better understand the world and therefore to find ways to make their lives better (including by defending themselves against hostile astral creatures). And I believe this is completely at odds with what the Idea of Evil and its minions want to achieve.
The perfect example of what that process of understanding can do was offered to us through Farnese’s journey. She was a scared and scarred young woman, driven down a dark path by her life and surroundings. But her encounter with Guts, a free spirit if there ever was one, threw her completely off course. She abandoned the façade she’d created over the years and started a painful journey of real personal growth. And eventually, she started learning magic, as she states herself: so that the light of reason would illuminate the darkness of the unknown.
Now, there are practical reasons we can invoke for why the God Hand wouldn’t want magic users around. For one thing because they could harm them or counter their plans. But if you think a little deeper, you’ll find that they also pose a threat because of their knowledge. They know how the world works, and that is very dangerous to the God Hand. But it goes deeper still. That knowledge and the power gained from the pursuit of magic give humans agency over their lives and over the world. It means any person can make a difference. And that is the opposite of what the Idea of Evil wants.
The eradication of astral creatures
After episode 358 I think we can all agree on how the God Hand plans on achieving its goal. It’s again something I’ve been rambling about for years: the eradication of astral beings. There’s a clear vision that was established with Falconia, one of humans having to stick together to survive against the natural world. Griffith is creating a purely human world, with a reformed society closer to a military dictatorship than to the feudal society they had before. That shot of the highway being built felt pretty dreadful to me. You can feel they’re really remaking the world. Making it orderly. Straight roads, well delineated fields and other regions, etc.
And of course, the reason for destroying astral beings is because they are agents of chaos, of unknown to the human world. Even beyond the practice of magic. I mean think for example of every time Guts’ life was changed by Puck. Or even Chich. They are outside the scope of what the God Hand and the Idea of Evil can control. They can provoke people’s minds and give them ideas or even inspire them in ways that the bad guys do not desire. Remember the chaos at Elfhelm when they all started dancing. These creatures are tied to human imagination and creativity, and their disappearance would impoverish mankind as a whole. Beyond just that, we can't forget how Puck basically saved Guts from perdition in the Black Swordsman arc. That is the power of elves.
One thing I need to mention is that there are obvious parallels between what I’m describing and what’s happening in the real world. On one hand, climate change and the way humans have ruined the Earth, on the other, the wave of fascism that’s washed over the world in the last few years and has left almost no country untouched.
Human-based magic vs Elemental magic
All right, with all that being said, I believe there are only two topics left to be addressed: how it all started, and what will happen going forward. Let’s do it chronologically. I’ve mentioned several times in the past how Griffith could be seen as a copycat of Gaiseric created by the Idea of Evil. It was always pretty clear, but Falconia’s design cemented it (since it's basically a revamp of Gaiseric's old city), and now his will to form a second empire further underlines it. I believe this is a hint that Gaiseric’s era was a pivotal moment for the God Hand (duh).
That Void was the first member of the God Hand and the one who caused Gaiseric’s fall is everybody’s basic assumption and I would tend to agree. My belief is that during that time, two schools of thought were at odds in the magical world: the practitioners of elemental, natural magic, and those who delved into “blood magic”. I don’t particularly like the term "blood magic" because it’s a misnomer for what I mean, which is a form of magic based on the power of the human soul. We’ve seen what it can do. The God Hand and the apostles are the result of that particular kind of "evil" magic. It's quite different from elemental magic, both thematically and practically. The specters that haunt Guts at night are a natural manifestation of it. And more recently, we also had the example of the Wicker Man that was filled with dead souls. That contraption, a forbidden device kept in storage by the last surviving magician community in the world, is a pretty big hint about what the ancient world was like, as I said at the time.
A short digression, but I believe Barytes (introduced in episode 346) may be the cosmological element behind the human-based power that the God Hand and the apostles use. It's described as being the element of weight, much tinier than the other four (too small to be seen with the naked eye) and being a sort of binding element for them. It make things heavy, but also darken the skies, causes gloominess or leads to obsessions. This is probably the most speculative part of this post, but I think it's possible that when people are filled with obsessive or negative emotions, Barytes become trapped and concentrated within the human soul. That would be a rational explanation for the "evil power" the bad guys use. And it may also have led to the Vortex's specific shape. Lastly, it's something that is antithetical to elves. Everything checks out.
What happened a thousand years ago
I think Void was a brilliant man and a powerful magic user. Someone who was probably a great ally to Gaiseric at some point. But someone who grew more and more obsessed with his research into the human soul. Was he desperate to find out what lurked deep down at the bottom of the Abyss? I would like to think so. And I believe it was also not too long before that time that the Idea of Evil developed its consciousness. In any case, I think Void was experimenting on people. I believe it’s even possible that he might have created the ceremony of sacrifice and the brand while he was still human, although it would have worked differently. Either way, Gaiseric, counseled by other magic users, banished him. And maybe, deep down in his cell, Void then left his corporeal body and journeyed spiritually deeper than any magician ever had before. Deep, deep… And there he met the God of the Abyss, and was reborn.
But how did Gaiseric’s capital city get annihilated in a single night, you might ask. Well, there are still a number of different possibilities there. For one thing I don’t think Void necessarily just sacrificed everyone there. To lay out some possible scenarios, I believe he might have had a cult of disciples following his ways and who either did sacrifices in his name or sacrificed themselves.
I also believe the capital city might not have been destroyed per se. The tale says it was "wiped off the face of the earth in a single night". Well, Falconia did appear out of nowhere in an instant… Maybe what happened to the capital city was simply the reverse of that. Maybe when the magic users implemented their decision to split the corporeal world and the astral world, to sap the power of the World Spiral Tree, well the world was torn apart. Some things stayed, some disappeared. Maybe the city, being so close to the tree, disappeared into the Astral World along with it. As for the angels, well did they invoke the four elemental kings of the world to help them seal the tree away? Who knows. And yes, I do remember what is at the bottom of the Tower of Rebirth (volume 10, episode 53). But that might not give us the full picture of what happened during that night. The tower itself is certainly a key to those events, however.
Separating the worlds facilitated the rise of the God Hand
Anyway, in the millennia that elapsed between then and now, a new force grew in strength. It’s interesting to think that splitting the world was in part responsible for the God Hand’s ascension to power. Because during that time, the GH all but destroyed the knowledge people had of the old world. The practice of magic all but disappeared. Memories of the astral world faded away and became perceived as mere myths. The doctrine of the Holy See played a key role in that regard in the part of the Berserk world we’re familiar with, and it’s clearly something that was orchestrated by the God Hand. It’s littered with its imagery (falcon, brand, spiral) and has prepared the world for the arrival of its final member.
So now people are powerless against the astral world because they have no knowledge of it and no natural means to deal with it. Their only recourse is the God Hand and its apostles. So what’s next? Well, I think we already have a pretty good idea. Griffith wants to expand. Falconia has moved on beyond artisans and into industry. It’s going to get militarized to the extreme, and I think eventually we’ll see a program where pseudo-apostle soldiers will be manufactured massively to boost the army. It’s only a matter of time. It might be kids from the orphanages or foreigners or criminals. It doesn’t matter. It’ll happen. A fascistic, dehumanized society is being formed. And it's bent on reshaping the world.
Living in the God Hand's world
I’ve said so before, but I think when Guts and the group get to go back, they’ll be treated to a shocking landscape, that of a dramatically transformed world. I picture that glaring disparity between Fantasia and the Falcon Empire as somewhat similar in spirit to how Frodo and Sam found the Shire when they returned from Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. And the “blind white sheep” concept will be stressed as well, with a Falconian society that will likely seem alien to our protagonists. It will be interesting to see in that context whether the people Guts has met in the past will be immune from that “sheepification”. I believe so.
Of course, the bad guys aren’t going to succeed, so we’ll never see their plan fully realized. But I do believe we’ll get some concrete details about it soon enough, while the group is in Elfhelm. All the ingredients are gathered: The Skull Knight, Danan, the Great Gurus, and the Moonlight Boy. The boy, of course, will be the key to defeating the God Hand. I've already talked about this at length elsewhere. Because of his attachment to his parents, and the fact he and Femto inhabit the same corporeal body, he represents a unique weakness that makes Guts & Casca pretty much the only ones who can stop the Falcon of Darkness. How that will go, however, is another story. And there is one last big unknown: what are the other members of the God Hand doing? I think that is also something we might learn about soon enough.