Zohar: What Xenogears Really means.

by Eric Reichel

Released in Japan nearly two years ago, Xenogears has pleased many RPG fans due to its extremely intricate and profound plot. However, few people actually understand the full implications of Xenogears' massive and epic storyline. What follows is the end result of nearly two years of research. I have scoured many old religious documents in an attempt to fully understand one of the most amazing stories in modern history. While I cannot guarantee that everything contained herein is totally accurate, I can assure you that a lot of effort has been put into making this explanation make sense.

At first glance Xenogears is a love story with a lot of religious symbolism. However, upon further examination it becomes quite clear that love is not the main theme of the game at all; in fact, it is a religious story using love as symbolism to back up its spiritual themes. To fully understand Xenogears, you must first understand one of the games biggest themes: Zohar. In the game, the Zohar referred to the engine on the ship that crashed in the beginning. It is easy to overlook the use of the term Zohar and pass it off as an attempt to put the game in a more religious environment, but in fact, the term Zohar is the single most important element in Xenogears' plot. Zohar is a reference to a manuscript that served as an interpretation of the Torah (the Jewish Bible). A Rabbi named Moses De Leon wrote the real Zohar in the thirteenth century. One of the major themes of the real Zohar was how there are varying degrees of meaning in religious scripture. It compared the Torah to a person saying that fools look only at the body of the Torah, while true sages look into the spirit of the Torah, and that in the end, the wisest people would look at the "soul of the soul" of the Torah. In other words, some people take religious scripture completely literally while more enlightened people look for deeper meaning that what is immediately obvious. When one looks at the world of Xenogears in terms of Zohar, many themes become much more clear. In the game, both the Existence Wave and Deus were imprisoned by the Zohar-actually, the fact that they are both caught up in the Zohar is very symbolically significant. This duality is one of the major themes in the game. It is clear that Deus represents the literal "body" of religion while the existence wave is symbolic of the "soul" of religion as mentioned in the Zohar.

There are many instances in the game that reinforce this idea. One of the most notable is in the scene with Lacan and Kalerlen (or Krelian for those of you who played the American version. Note: throughout this document I will use the Japanese names for characters, places, etc. simply because it is the only version with which I have experience.) In this scene Kalerlen says that the Nissan Church's "God" could not exist because no "God" could allow such suffering. At this point he set out to "create his own God with his own hands". When this theme is interpreted in terms of the Zohar, it is seen that the Nissan Church represents a view of "God" that more closely resembles the "soul" of the Torah. Also note that in this incarnation, Elly's name was "Sophia" which is Latin for "wisdom". The fact that she founded a religion based on the Zohar's concept of "wisdom" leads one to believe that this is not a simple coincidence. However, when faced with the pain of Sophia's death, Kalerlen rejected the concept of a less literal "God" and went in search of a God that more closely resembled the Zohar's vision of the "body" of the Torah. In the end of his search, he found Deus, to whom he devoted his life to reviving. Another example of the duality between the "body" and "soul" of religion can be found in the game's portrayal of "nanotechnology". The nanotechnology in the game was actually a metaphor for religion. In the Zeboim era, Kim and Elly used nanotechnology to-in a literal sense-create a child. However, in a figurative sense, they used it to connect with each other-as symbolized by the fact that they used the nano-assembler to combine their DNA. This connection between the two of them (in each of their incarnations) is probably the single most important theme in the game; especially in the end. However, later on, Kalerlen used nanotechnology to toy with mankind-he lost all reverence for human life. He used the nanotechnology to further Solaris' goals and he even tried to produce an artificial "sesshokumono" or "contact" (Ramsus). His attempt to artificially recreate the contactor of the Existence Wave simply to aid his own purpose was reinforcement of the fact that he lost sight of what was truly important.

This brings about an interesting question: what was the point of the "soul" of religion that Xenogears was trying to convey? The distinction between the "body" and the "soul" has already been made, but what the "soul" means has not yet been revealed. In the Nissan church, there is a statue of two one-winged angels holding hands and flying: one male, one female. This is quite obviously symbolic of human togetherness. Throughout the game, it is made quite clear that this idea of humans being able to find spiritual completeness in one another is the true point of the "soul".

A common problem with the interpretation of Xenogears is in trying to associate each of the religions portrayed in the game with a real world counterpart. It does not take long to realize that not only is this impossible, it is not even what the game was trying to convey. However, the two main religions in the game, the Nissan religion and the Solarian religion, are both unmistakably Judeo-Christian. Despite the fact that they were so different that they fought a war with each other, they were actually two different views of a similar concept; the only difference being their respective relations to the different views of the Torah as mentioned in the Zohar. The Uroboros Gene symbolizes the idea of their similarity despite their contrast. The founder of the Nissan church was eternally (or at least until the end of the game) bound to Mian-who was the Solarian counterpart to Elly, the anti-type. When this idea is analyzed, it is clear that the Uroboros gene was a symbol for not only the two religions' connection, but to the connection between the "body" and the "soul" as mentioned in the Zohar. Elly is a living symbol for the "soul" whereas Mian is a living symbol for the "body". At the end of the game, when you finally fight Uroboros, you are, in fact, fighting a symbolic representation of the connection between what religion says (i.e. a literal interpretation of the scripture) and the underlying themes that it expresses.

It is not until the end of the game that all of its themes surface. Near the end of the game, there is a scene in which the two halves of the Mian gene (Elly and, of course, Mian) re-unite. This was symbolic of the conquest of Deus over the Existence Wave and subsequently, of the "body" over the "soul". Afterwards is the scene in which Deus awakens, which has more than a passing resemblance to the Christian concept of Christ's second coming-even the term "Malakh" is a Hebrew word for angel that was used in the bible to describe Jesus. Once Fei resolves to save Elly from Deus and the two parts of his soul are united, he receives Xenogears, which is very symbolic. After your party fights Deus, all of the other gears stop working because Zohar gave them their power. However, Xenogears could still function normally since it was powered by Fei's soul. In the game gears were the "Anima". "Anima" and "Animus" were like Latin equivalents of Yin/Yang. However, "Animus" represents the logical and the masculine, while "Anima" represents the spiritual and the feminine. From this, one can see that the gears were symbolic of the people's souls. Therefore, keeping in mind that Zohar was used as a symbol for religion, Fei's acquisition of Xenogears represented his spiritual independence from religion in that Xenogears did not require Zohar to function. Anyway, when you follow Deus off the surface of the planet, you fight Uroboros (the symbolic importance of which is discussed above). After the fight you see a scene with Kalerlen, who talks about all of the horrible sins he committed in his quest to revive Deus. He realizes that he was misled, but also realizes that it was far too late to go back; he had already lost his "humanity". This concept was symbolized in the fact that he had no human genitalia. In the end, he turned around and grew two angel wings. Looking back on the statue at the church of Nissan, one sees that two one-winged humans holding hands in order to fly symbolized human togetherness. The fact that Kalerlen had two wings symbolized the fact that he did not need human connections, since he was able to find his form of completeness though his "God". His final words expressed his envy for Fei and Elly's connection and he left. As Xenogears descended to earth, it had a full set of wings, since both Fei and Elly were inside-this showed how they were able to find completeness in each other.

In conclusion, the game shows that human togetherness is more important than religion. Once Zohar, the game's symbolic representation of religion, was gone, Fei and Elly were still complete because of their connection with each other. If you will recall, the Zohar mentioned that in the end, the truly wise would look at the "soul of the soul" of the Torah. The connection between Fei and Elly-which is actually symbolic of human togetherness in general-is the game's interpretation of the Zohar's concept of the "soul of the soul" of the Torah. This means that while the Nissan religion was closer to understanding what the game made out to be the true meaning of existence (i.e. human relationships) than the Solarian religion was, it did not completely separate the "body", which we now know was symbolized by "God" from the "soul", which was symbolized by human togetherness. In the end, only the complete destruction of all religion could show the world that the "soul of the soul" (i.e. the true point of existence) was mankind's relations with each other. Elly's full name was "Ellahyym"; this is an alternate transliteration for the Hebrew word, "elohim", which means "the true god". Since Elly was the human with whom Fei connected, this just reinforces the idea that the true point of existence, according to Xenogears, is human togetherness and not God. In essence, Xenogears' main theme could best be described as "humanist", but such a generalization would overshadow many of the game's subtle spiritual themes; Xenogears was truly the ultimate story of life, love, and existence.

-Eric Reichel, Webmaster of TeamRPG - www.teamrpg.com