Who Void and Slann were before GodHand

[SexyCharlotte]

Speculation is always good :)

I am going to support the theory then that Void was the first God Hand. The reason? Well, Midland a thousand years ago seemed akin to Rome or Greece it seems. If the storyline currently is during Medieval Times, then a thousand years before that would be approximately the heydey of the Romans and Greeks. If you take a look at the architecture and the way people were dressed back in King Gaiseric's day, you will see it resembles Rome in some ways. Grand architecture.

Plus, Gaiseric had an 'empire.' He was obviously a great leader and military fighter. What could have existed a thousand years BEFORE this empire to facilitate God Hand anyways? I think Idea was waiting for people to become more civilized, build empire, and therefore, have more reason to use behelits for sacrifices and for power. Idea was waiting I believe for the moments in history when mankind would have a greater need and desire for power and revenge, during times of war and the building of cities, kingdoms and empires.

Slann and Void had a connection with Gaiseric, that is known. We still don't know anything about Ubik or Conrad, the 'lesser' God Hand. Because Void is God Hand's 'leader' and appears to be the most powerful, I think he was also the First God Hand.

If there WERE more previous God Hands I don't see how they could have all been sacrificed, killed, or gotten rid of somehow. I think God Hand started with Void and SK. And I believe the angels he called down and summoned were the Kings of the elements. Slann followed, then Conrad and Ubik ( interesting to see where they came from and who they were) and then Femto.

Now, there's only four of them now that Griffith has been reborn...I wonder if these four who are floating around looking for bodies are going to need a fifth one to complete the Hand?

LG

 

[Walter]

Idea was waiting I believe for the moments in history when mankind would have a greater need and desire for power and revenge, during times of war and the building of cities, kingdoms and empires.

Or Idea didn't even exist before Gaiseric's time. It sounds to me like Gaiseric's "evil" rule was the initial step in changing humanity's mindset to be able to facilitate the need for a God.

Slann and Void had a connection with Gaiseric, that is known.

No, it's not. Both are speculations. Void's is a little more concrete. Slan, to Skully so far is just "mother of all prostitutes".

Because Void is God Hand's 'leader'

Well, that is also speculation.

Now, there's only four of them now that Griffith has been reborn...I wonder if these four who are floating around looking for bodies are going to need a fifth one to complete the Hand?

The hand is complete. "Femto" never really left. Remember that since the completion of the hand in volume 13, their grand design, whatever it is, has been in action. Nothing has thrown a kink in the gears just yet. Everything is moving as planned.

 

[Mizar]

But Schierke mentioned that the 4 Kings are the angels mentioned in the Holy See. Indirectly, we can infer it is they who destroyed Gaiseric's empire. And since Void was a "wise man" it would make sense if he knew a little bit about summonings, just as Schierke did.

I actually agree with you and Lady G that it's quite possible that the "wise man" knew a thing or two about magic himself, and that he could have summoned the 4 Kings himself to escape from his prison and destroy Gaiserics empire with it.

The only problem with this theory about Void being the very first are SK's words like you mentioned yourself, and that somehow I get the feeling that Idea and the story of the 4 Kings don't really mix too well. But SK's words should be enough to discard your theory about this, how else can you explain it when he says "once every 1000 years...". That rather strongly implicates that Godhand and Idea has been around for at least more than 1000 years. Maybe there's a way to combine the cyclic theory with this theory about the wise man and his magic?

Anyway, my reasoning for this wacky theory came to me as I re-read through the past 20 chapters. It seems strange for Miura to all of the sudden bring up the concept of summonings and the 5/6 spirits (earth, water, wind, fire, shadow and...?).

I agree that the appearance of all this magic and summoning into the story must be playing some role into it all. No problem there.

But I've said this before in this same thread and I'll say it again, there is really no reason to believe there is something like a 5th King of Shadow/Darkness. Even though the spirit Schierke summoned in the last chapters was clearly a dark and very dangerous one to call, she was only using/borrowing the power of the elemental spirits of Earth and Water to summon this spirit, nothing more. Besides, it's very unlikely there's actually a 5th or 6th one, since Schierke called these Kings in a former chapter the Guardian Angels, the ones who are guarding West, East, North and South. Shadow or Darkness just doesn't fit in here, they would be an entirely different thing imo. And Schierke also said the following in Volume 24 regarding the elementals, and I quote Erias' translation here:
"The four states of energy in the real world -- solid, liquid, energy, and gas -- resonate in the shadow world as elementals, symbolized accordingly as earth, water, fire, and wind."
I don't see why Schierke would have left out another one or two here. No, I'm afraid we really have to settle with these four only.

But this doesn't mean that your basic argument is invalid, though. Which is that Miura didn't suddenly bring up all these things for nothing. And I hope we'll all soon understand a little (with some help from Flora perhaps) why.

 

[Frogacuda]

Like Mizar said below, there was. Idea. He's the one with all the plans in store for the world, basically. He is God Hand's superior. It's like with Hellraiser. I keep bringing that up because that's the closest metaphor I can think of. All the cenobites were human once, imbued with powers once they had given themselves up to the 'Leviathan god' in the box. Leviathan, like Idea, had no real 'shape or form'.. it was basically a force.

LG

I thought Idea was created from the will of mankind. That they searched for an explanation for tragedy and so he came to be. That's the way it seemed to be put in the translation I read of Girffith's encounter with Idea, and that pretty much jives with alot of existing fantasy literature with regards to the origins of Gods. They exist and draw their power from people's beleif in them.

 

[SexyCharlotte]

Which brings me to how Berserk interested me with its religious and spiritual upheavals of our traditional definition of good, evil, God, angels and apostles. In Christianity God, the angels and the 12 apostles were all seen as good. In Berserk it seems Idea ( God) is the result of man's ego and desire to 'seek out meaning for himself'. Idea is the result of man's selfishness to find meaning in his own existence, but you could argue that man's curiosity and the need to find meaning to his life is not necessarily bad in itself.

The Holy See= is like the Bible, or prophecies, the Gospels.

Miura incorporates a lot of interesting cultural and historical parallels as well. Seems to me Gaiseric was sort of a Julius Caesar of sorts with his empire. Not an evil guy but ruthless and unrelenting and a great military leader.

The golem, by the way, is from Jewish mythology...it is a mud ghost or entity which was supposed to seek justice for a dead person who had been wronged. Once the justice was found the golem dissapated into dust.

LG

 

[namayias]

i think all of this set up with magic and whatnot is all for elfheim since it is the homeland of elves and it being magical.

I think teh 4/?5 kings does have something to do with gaiserick. And about the questionable 5th. Shadow/Darkness implies nothingness. to have darkness you do not need fire/water/wind/earth. since it is comprised of nothing then shadow/darkness would not have a location as fire/water/wind/earth do, cause how can nothing have a real location. this may just be talk out of my ass but its good speculation to throw out there, IMHO.

 

[Walter]

Well, shadow not being an element doesn't refute the possibility of Idea possibly being summoned by Void, back in the day. I will admit that my "theory" on that is getting a little out of hand. Step one: summon 4 kings! Step two: summon Idea? Sounds a little ambitious, even for a "wise man".

 

[Mizar]

Shadow/Darkness implies nothingness. to have darkness you do not need fire/water/wind/earth. since it is comprised of nothing then shadow/darkness would not have a location as fire/water/wind/earth do, cause how can nothing have a real location. this may just be talk out of my ass but its good speculation to throw out there, IMHO.

That's all very nice but it's speculation based on quicksand, noone mentioned anything about an actual King of Shadow/Darkness in the latest chapters (Saiki talked about a spirit of shadow, which could also be interpreted as just a simple dark spirit). The only thing that was said about this darkness/shadow thing was that Schierke was going to summon something very powerful but dangerous at the same time, and then Schierke remembers Flora's words: "don't forget, that when you look into the darkness, the darkness also looks back at you." Also, at the beginning of her spell Schierke asks the spirits of Water and Earth for their power to call upon this creature.
And in the next chapter when the summoned spirit appears it calls itself something like "the master of decayed root", which implies that we're dealing with some sort of (dark) plant/tree like spirit. The spirit even looks like it is made entirely of roots. And don't plants/trees root into the Earth and stay alive if it's given Water?

 

[number18]

Hm. My second post. I just finished watching the anime series and am ready to jump into the whole world of the manga. I can't really speculate about anything in particular about the God's Hand and who Void and Slann were since I haven't read any of the manga. But, I've been writing my own story for awhile (before I knew about Berserk, actually) with a somewhat similar feel to Berserk as far as the darkness, medieval environment and demons go, and I've been researching a lot for my own writings.

Skull Knight refers to Slann as the mother of all prostitutes? There is a lot of Jewish mythology (some of it contradicts itself, but whatever) that tells stories of Lilith, Adam's first wife. For those of you who don't know, Lilith was the first female and companion of Adam, but he more or less tried to dominate her (instead of being her equal) during sex and she spoke the "Ineffable Name" and (I think) sprouted wings and flew out of the Garden.

Now, that whole story I just related is confusing to me because I have read a lot. In other texts, apparently, the first human creation was like...this androgynous being and the male and female were joined and existing in a single body (as opposed to other texts that say Lilith was created from Dust or the same dirt Adam was made from). Then God split them in two and THAT was Adam and Lilith...and then I think the same sex thing happened and Lilith took off.

After Lilith took off, I've read that she goes and basically begins to have sex with all these demons (and apparently is sprouting demon babies by the hundreds spontaneously?) and thus she is the mother of all demons and a prostitute and all these other things. I've also read that after Eve is created from Adam, Lilith returns and Adam cheats on Eve and has sex with Lilith. The seed from Adam in Lilith makes her spawn all these demon babies...more or less. (I'll add that this all confuses me because I am still trying to decifer where all these demons came from to mate with Lilith in the first place, since everything had just kinda been created and there really wasn't that much "evil" until the watcher angels in heaven fell from grace. And that rebellion was supposedly caused by angels' jealousy of man...but maybe everything happened pretty quickly ....who the hell knows)

I've also read some very confusing but interesting stuff (that I was in the middle of reading when last researching) about a creature called Sammael and his relationship to Lilith. I've made the connection that Sammael is possibly the snake that tempts Eve in the garden and that he used to be an angel. He used to be the brightest angel in heaven (aka Lucifer, aka the Devil). I still don't know why, but Sammael is later Lilith's companion. They can't have intercourse, though, because Sammael was castrated after he was thrown from heaven, so they need this third being to help carry the seed from Sammael into Lilith...his name is The Blind Prince or the Blind Dragon and I've also seen people equating him with the Leviathin.

And um, I don't quite know what I was trying to tell with all that information, except that maybe Miura is making Slann out to be a Lilith-like figure, since Skully is calling her the mother of all prostitutes? That is what Lilith is more or less made out to be. She is the mother of all demons and a tempter, wild, and basically pushed and made into something evil. She is the first succubus, and all her children are the same (she's always seducing men in their dreams to steal their semen and have children)...and I totally see Slann as a succubus. I dunno, though...my knowledge of Lilith mythology is thoroughly fuzzy, since it's been awhile since I last researched, and it's all sources seem to contradict one another. Still, it would be interesting to see some sort of relation/link between Slann and all the Lilith mythology. I doubt it though, since I just don't know enough of the manga.

Another interesting tidbit to play with for you guys that know way more about the manga is that Merlin was speculated to be the offspring of a demon/human coupling. So because his mother (I think) was raped or coupled with an incubus (the male version of succubus), he was so powerful as a wizard and all that. =shrug= I guess the main point of me posting all this is for you guys to toy with all the succubus/lilith info and apply it to what's happening in the manga. O,o;; That's not too weird, is it?