perfectwitchcrown

[perfectwitchcrown]

revolutionary girls

print for AX 🌹

[perfectwitchcrown]

CW: References to suicidal ideation

I'm sort of majorly fascinated by Leah, Priest, and Dante's relationships with each other. Leah was physically saved by Dante as a child, while Priest considers himself to have been saved by Dante's clumsy expression of sympathy as a child. However, the way they engage with him is also majorly different. Dante is officially (?) Priest's mentor, and in the original Japanese text he refers to him as sensei, but he also like fully doesn't respect him as a person lmfao. Leah's level of respect for him, on the other hand, seems vague. In the Japanese text she refers to him as Dante kun, which is personally hilarious to me since he's both older than her and higher up than her in the church hierarchy. It's kind of hilariously casual. They don't seem especially close, but they've known each other longer than Dante's known Priest. Like Leah's cheerfully informal with him but she's also kind of like that w everyone, but also like they're the only two survivors of a massive loss of civilian and exorcist life it's so ???

As a caveat, I'm fascinated by the extent to which Dante has shared his relationship with Vergilius to the rest of the church. Priest doesn't seem to know that they know each other at all. But simultaneously, the image that Dante has of Verge when they were kids, that is his phone background, is also a printed out image on one of their strategy boards (although it's unclear where he's at so maybe it's like his . Leah has the image downloaded to her phone tho too. She and Barbara were with Dante in France looking for witches, so I'm guessing that's when she got it, but what is the backstory Dante gives to him and Verge when he explains why he has a cropped photo of Vergilius as a kid?? Anyway, I also think it's funny that we get a Leah panel when Mikhail points out in chapter 19 that it's a funny coincidence for there to be a Dante and Vergilius running around. One, that feels pointed from Mikhail tbh since he's been consistently shown to be smarter than he seems. And two, why r we getting a live Leah reaction. How much does she know ??

All three have been death seekers as some point in their life, and Dante has faced both Priest and Leah in moments in which they've expressed this, and neither time has he had especially great advice to give. Which like, in the case with Leah, of course not, he was visibly a teenager. But I find the overlap of their despair really interesting. Dante seems to recognize Priest's feeling in the first chapter of the world not feeling worth living in, while Leah's goal at the expense of her own life motivation mirror's current era Dante's desire to destroy Verge and himself in the process.

On the other hand, Priest and Leah's relationship to the Church is vastly different from Leah's. Priest and Dante both fall within the conservative factions hierarchy under the Pope, whereas Leah falls under Cardinal Heisenberg's faction. While Dante and Priest both grew up in Abbott Nicholas's monastery, with him as presumably their primary guardian, Leah was raised by her family, and it is unclear where she lived following their death, although presumably in some part of the church. It's not clear whether she was ever especially religious prior to joining the church, and her motivation for joining was purely revenge. Dante and Priest, on the other hand, have a genuinely complicated relationship with the religion they grew up in. It's something that's impacted their identity in a way that doesn't seem to have struck Leah to the same degree. Which also makes her willingness to use alchemy all the more interesting, for the way it shows she has greater comfort stepping outside the bounds of orthodoxy.

Anyways, I just think these are really interesting features to their relationships. I love Leah's character and have been hoping we'll see her again soon.

[perfectwitchcrown]

I've accidentally left this post sit in my drafts for awhile, so here is my meta (mostly) about File #71 (with some updated sections since I first wrote it). More under the cut.

CW: References to homophobia, references to suicide and suicidal ideation

I had suspected that Abbott Nicholas didn't think Dante was gay, and this file more or less confirmed my suspicion. I feel it is more likely that he really did say something cruel in the scene we've only seen snippets of where Vergilius left. Especially since he brings up the idea of "influence" in this file. As closeted as Dante was, all of the other children seemed to be aware that he was gay. Abbott Nicholas seems to have not broached the topic with Dante, largely because he doesn't believe Dante is gay. I wonder if Abbott Nicholas not addressing the rumors with Dante might have been in some way reassuring to a young Dante. I don't at all mean that he thought Abbott Nicholas was supportive of him being gay, because I think the extent to which he was trying to prove he was straight to him makes it clear he didn't. But Abbott Nicholas not broaching the subject and continuing to be perceived as favoring him might have allowed for a little bit of hope. Which is part of where my mind goes with Comedy 2's presentation of Dante and Vergilius's separation, where Dante just looks absolutely crushed while he's looking back at Abbott Nicholas. If Abbott Nicholas connected Dante's relationship to Vergilius as having some relationship to the rumors he'd heard from the children and said something, the limbo in which Dante doesn't have to let his sexuality impact his relationship with someone who was likely his parental figure would've been over. If Dante goes with Vergilius, then he would have to confirm he is gay and he would now be faced with evidence of that meaning rejection from his parental figure. If Abbott Nicholas identified Vergilius as the source of the rumors that Dante was gay, and Dante didn't go with Vergilius, then he can continue being the favored student of his parental figure, but with the knowledge that he's betrayed the one he loves and cannot ever reveal the truth without losing all of it.

This is mostly just complete speculation over Dante backstory though and motivations though. Ultimately, I don't know whether we even will get a concrete explanation of what exactly happened that day, or whether it'll always be kept vague. Frankly, I could see it going either way, but this is just where my mind goes to what might have happened.

I do want to also mention though how I did not notice at first that this separation occurred in the forest. The forest shows up a couple of times in the Inferno: the first is at the very beginning in Canto I, when Dante is lost, and the second is in Canto XIII, where Dante encounters "The Wood of the Self-Murderers," where those who have taken their own lives have turned into trees. Some scholars have connected similarities in some of the phrases of these two sections as indicating the depth of Dante's despair at the beginning of the poem. At the end of Canto I, after Dante has wandered lost in the woods and been chased by wild animals, Virgil appears and the Canto ends with Dante following behind Virgil: "Then he moved on, and I behind him followed" in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation, which is publicly available online. It feels significant then that MTEFIL's Dante came across Vergilius in the woods, was also offered an opportunity to follow behind him, and failed to do so. Vergilius naming himself that also then feels like a really cutting decision.

Back to the file, I'm also curious to see that we received more information about Dante's mentor/mentee relationship with Mother Rosa. I had assumed he hadn't started working with her until after these events, but I was completely incorrect. Abbott Nicholas blames her for Dante's attitude getting worse which is super fascinating. I'm really curious about what her relationship with him at this period looked like. I've mentioned in previous meta, but Dante has reused her advice she gave him in a way that suggests to me he genuinely respected her. That he repeats Mother Rosa's advice she gave to Priest after recognizing Priest's mentality as a result of Abbott Nicholas's influence suggests to me that he felt she helped him as well with some of the baggage Abbott Nicholas gave him. That it's so connected to the idea of sexuality also makes me wonder the extent to which she was aware that Dante was gay. I'm really hoping we get more of her, especially since we know she was the prior strongest exorcist. She was also the previous strongest exorcist pleaseee I wanna see more of her....

There's also the performance of heterosexuality. Ekuoto Dante's expression of internalized homophobia reminded me of some sections from real Dante's Vita Nuova. Idk how intentional this is, it could just be an interesting coincidence but I just thought I might share.

Towards the beginning of Dante's Vita Nuova, he writes about how on one occasion he was staring at Beatrice, who was near another woman. The other woman, and other people around them, thought he was staring at her, rather than Beatrice. He decides to make use of it:

"Therefore I was reassured, and knew that for that day my secret had not become manifest. Then immediately it came into my mind that I might make use of this lady as a screen to the truth: and so well did I play my part that the most of those who had hitherto watched and wondered at me, now imagined they had found me out."

Later on, he further decides to "screen" his love of Beatrice by doing this:

"I took the resolution to set down the name of this most gracious creature accompanied with many other women’s names, and especially with hers whom I spake of. And to this end I put together the names of sixty of the most beautiful ladies in that city where God had placed mine own lady"

So he masks his love for one woman by writing poetry about how beautiful sixty different women were. Why he does this, idk. There's a section not long after this that I personally find funny where Dante describes how this actually pisses Beatrice off because he's stringing along various women and she doesn't say hi to him when they come across each other so he sobs himself to sleep.

Anyways, back to MTEFIL. I know I'm not the first person to say this, but I really hope we see more of the in-between moments that caused Dante's personality to change so drastically. The period where I would argue he seems to have been the most emotionally stable and confident, the first chapter of the series, comes after Vergilius left sometime in either their late preteen or early teen years, and the subsequent death of Mother Rosa in 2011. How the hell did this guy bounce back so well from all of that, and then what possibly could've happened that was worse than both of those events to make him as more or less hopeless as he is now??

I'm also no where near the first person to say this, but I agree with the assessment that he might've reunited with Vergilius at some point prior to the first chapter, after their separation in childhood. I suspect there is a second break up we don't know about that really crushed him. Dante talks about love not being able to save people while thinking about Vergilius in one of his "my advice to Priest was shitty" monologues, which is so distinctly at odds with his thought process in the first chapter. I wonder if he tried to "save" Vergilius sometime in those seven years.

As always, if anyone has any different takes or feels I missed something, I'd love to hear what u think on it!

[perfectwitchcrown]

I saw a JP fan mention a while back that chapter 55's title was mistranslated in the English tl and is actually the Japanese name for an English novel, so I decided to go through all the chapter titles and see if any other references were missed. Normal text will be already correct titles, and bold will be missed refs:

6. Dies irae (poem)

9. The Left Hand of Darkness (novel)

16. Ode to Joy (poem)

17. For Whom the Bell Tolls (novel)

20, 21, 79, 81. Divine Comedy (poem)

26. Lord of the Flies (novel)

35. Either Ikitekoso (song) or Alive (movie)

55. Childhood's End (novel)

56. He-y, Come on Ou-t! (short story)

67. Planet of the Apes (novel or movie)

80. It's a Wonderful Life (movie)

While doing this I actually noticed something extremely interesting. There are 7 titles that are character names. 6 are demon names (the 5 defeated Demon Lords and Imuri), and the last one... is Mikhail. He is the only one to break that pattern.. Which of course could mean nothing 🤐

[perfectwitchcrown]

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love - Witches Part 3

Links to Part One and Part Two

This is an update to my previous posts on the Witches in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love I’m adding another possible origin for Charlotte’s name, information on medieval conceptions of Virgil the poet, and a brief addition on demonological references within Ekuoto.

Content warning for reference to sexual violence and misogyny

Charlotte

Previously I mentioned that a potential origin for Charlotte's name was as a reference to a Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story, "When I Was a Witch." However, I recently found another possible source that I think is also worth noting, which is Jules Michelet's La Sorcière, a 19th century text on the history of witchcraft, including a witchcraft case involving a woman named Marie-Catherine Cadière, who in some versions of Michelet's book is referred to as Charlotte.

As background context, I was reading Marion Gibson's Witchcraft: A History of Thirteen Trials recently, and in one chapter she writes about the witch trial of Marie-Catherine Cadière and Jean-Baptist Girard from 1730-1731 in France. This is a fairly well documented event, so I'll only provide a short version of the circumstances as those who wish to read more can do so, although I should warn that the details are upsetting. Cadière had been a member of a religious group led by a Jesuit priest, Jean-Baptiste Girard. While a part of this religious group, formed mainly of women, she began experiencing religious visions, which Girard capitalized on. Later on, Cadière accused Girard of several things, including rape and witchcraft. In response, Girard accused her of slander. In the end, both were acquitted of their charges. The trial was highly publicized in it's time, including internationally. I was able, for example, I was able to find a 1730 English language text on the case in it's tenth edition.

Later on, in the 19th century, this case was also described in La Sorcière by Jules Michelet (known as Satanism and Witchcraft in English). The book "stated that medieval and Renaissance French 'witches' had been early pantheists too: revolutionary pagan priestesses, healers, and mesmerists, sexually liberated, and in touch with an old deity wrongly demonized as Satanic" (Gibson 150).

It should be noted that his historical analysis in this book is considered fairly inaccurate by current scholars (its style of historical writing is also painfully 19th century), but as a text it's had a lot of impact in the way witch trials are thought about in the popular imagination. I've paged through some of the translation available on Project Gutenberg. Here's some quotations I think are interesting in considering this text in relation to ekuoto:

"At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I say unfalteringly, 'In the age of despair:' of that deep despair which the gentry of the Church engendered. Unfalteringly do I say, 'The Witch is a crime of their own achieving.'" (Michelet 9)

"In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself as God?" (Michelet 148)

Michelet also, according to Gibson, repeatedly calls Cadière the wrong name in the book, referring to her as Charlotte instead of Marie-Catherine. Here's an important caveat though. For whatever reason, the French edition on Project Gutenberg does not use this mistaken name, nor does the English translation available on it. I was, however, able to find another English translation that refers to her as Charlotte. Additionally, the wikipedia article on the book refers to her as Charlotte, which suggests to me that either that editor read one of the translations I came across or another one that also maintains that error. Now, I don't know exactly what is going on, but I have several theories that I unfortunately don't have the resources or the energy to fully investigate.

An early version of the original French may have mistakenly referred to her as Charlotte, and the version on Gutenberg is from a later reprint that fixed that error

An early English translation of the text mistakenly referred to her as Charlotte, and the mistake is not actually Michelet's but has been spread around in English

Control + F was not working right for me (I do not speak French and used control + f rather than scroll through)

Now, regardless, it doesn't really matter for our purposes. Ultimately, if the text is being referenced, depending on the edition the authors of ekuoto came across, it seems entirely possible that this mistake was present in that edition. Which, again, I don't find it improbable that they may have come across the text, as it popularized a sort of imagining of those accused of witchcraft in Early modern Europe as feminist rebels against the church, and while it's analysis isn't held as historically accurate anymore, it has popularized ways of thinking about witch trials outside of academic circles. This presentation also super lines up with how the witches have been presented in Ekuoto. The book is also less niche than the Gilman story. But, again, Charlotte is a majorly popular name, and the historical Cadière, although heavily referenced in Michelet's book, is not the main figure of it. I did however consider it an interesting enough possibility that I thought it was worth bringing up.

Also, randomly, Michelet's book was apparently the inspiration for the 1973 animated movie Belladonna of Sadness. The more you know.

Virgil the Sorcerer

Speaking of names: Vergilius. On one hand, his name is an obvious reference to Virgil from the Divine Comedy. However, if you were to page through Michelet's book, you'd also see several references to Virgil as a magician. This is because there was a medieval conception of him as a sorcerer. Which I think is hilarious. Virgil's all over the place status in stories is so funny to me because like, he was a real guy. People have been making shit up about him for centuries. Anyways, I read an article, which I'll cite at the bottom, about how this association came to be. The short of it is that he became associated with the idea of prophecy and people started telling stories about him as a magical figure at least by the 12th century and giving him increasingly complex backstories (that I should mention have nothing to do with his historical background LMFAO). Like, magical girl backstory shit. Like his mom was a fairy and he was born with a divine symbol on his forehead before becoming magical at age 14 level stuff. Unfortunately the article didn't include any of the stories, because I was so deeply fascinated. He's a fairy tale figure at this point, and often a mentor figure. As the article states, "Almost all the tales present Virgil as an essentially benevolent character who helps the underdog, and is always ready to punish the wicked" (Wood 94-95). He's like a helpful wizard archetype.

Now, there's a medieval story that sort of doesn't follow this storyline called Virgil in the Basket. It's a sort of misogynistic story with a big "don't trust women, they'll trick you!" theme, where Virgil is tricked by a woman who promises to pull him up into her bedroom in a basket. Instead, she traps him in the basket for everyone to laugh at. He then takes revenge by making all the fires in town go out, with them only being able to be ignited again from her genitalia. This second section seems to have decreased its appearance in artistic renditions of the story as time went on, with the basket section being more focused on.

Later on in the early 20th century, Andrew Lang included a version of the story called "Vergilius the Sorcerer" in his The Violet Fairy Book. In it, Virgilius is a young bookworm who's been sent alone to Toledo following the death of his father. He ends up tricking a spirit in a cave into giving him books to learn magic, which he then uses in various ways to solve problems he comes across. He falls in love with a young woman, who tricks him with the basket. The cruder punishment Lang changes to just having fire appear from her, so she has to stand in the town square for three days for everyone to get fire again. He later falls in love with a princess, who turns against her father for him, and they found Naples and it talks a lot about how a tower in Naples is built on a foundation made of eggs, which appears to be another Virgil legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_dell%27Ovo.

Anyways, I think that's an interesting set of info on Vergilius--his name is both a Divine Comedy reference, and also referencing a period of Medieval folklore that places Virgil as a magician.

Lucifer and Others

Also, I thought it was worth mentioning that Make the Exorcist Fall in Love bases it's hierarchy of demons (with Lucifer as Pride, Satan as Wrath, etc etc) on Peter Binsfeld's description of them in Treatise on the Confessions by Evildoers and Witches, a demonological text from the 16th century. Unfortunately, it was not translated into English until 2024 so I was unable to read it, and the only copy I could find for free was in Latin, which I do not know. In all likelihood, Ekuoto is not directly in conversation with this text but rather it's lasting memory in the cultural consciousness, as this assignment of demons to sins is pretty common as the text was very influential. I wanted to read it though...

Book of Enoch and Paradise Lost

Others have explained the influence of the Book of Enoch on Ekuoto far better than I have, so I will only touch on it to say that I am in agreement with others statements that the section on the Nephilim is in reference to it. The presence of the flood is the nail in the coffin for me.

I recently made myself actually sit down and read Paradise Lost and found that it also appears to reference the Book of Enoch. As far as I can tell, the Bible does not actually connect the flood with nephilim, just generalized wickedness (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!). Paradise Lost, however, connects the two as does the Book of Enoch. Which, I think is interesting. I've seen lots of buzz about the potential relation Paradise Lost might play in this arc because of the role of Lucifer. I would be really interested to see if that's the case. My key things I'd be interested in seeing are:

how it might engage with the themes of gender and sexuality in Paradise Lost. I found it very very "yay patriarchal heterosexual unions!" in it's presentation of Adam and Eve, but it also simultaneously has a section where Raphael says the angels have like spiritual rather than bodily sex but also all the angels depicted are men. Since we've seen Ekuoto engage and subvert the themes of misogyny in other texts, so I'd be interested in seeing how it engages with this one

The singular Mammon dig in the poem that's like this dude wasn't even good in heaven he was staring at the gold sidewalks all the time

The fallen angels of the poem are punished physically by being turned into serpents after Lucifer/Satan causes Adam and Eve to eat the apple. The fallen angels in Ekuoto also seem to have experienced some sort of physical change in relation to their fall -> what caused that?

Other Assorted Notes on Names

I do want to really emphasize though that everyone's name in Ekuoto has seemingly been a direct reference to either a literary figure or a Biblical character, outside of Imuri it seems, unless she's also some literary reference I'm not aware of. Her surname, Atsuki contains the kanji for love and moon, but as for her first name idk what the deal is. I tried looking it up, and best I could find was that her name is also the name of a sci fi seinen manga that ran from 2006 to 2020, so I'll do research on that end. It does involve people frozen in ice though so like hrmm...

I still don't feel confident pinning down what Charlotte's name is in reference to. But, if we get more on her I'm sure it will become more clear, and I feel we will since we haven't gotten any of her past despite being a senior member of the witches , and since her romantic feelings for Vergilius haven't been fully dealt with.

Leah and Daniel are both names from the Bible. Barbara is the name of a Saint. Dante is obviously Dante (which idk if anyone cares but Dante was historical Dante's nickname, Dante is the shortened form of the name Durante). The Book of Mark from the bible is called マルコ福音書 in Japanese, or the Gospel of Marco so I guess that's where Marco's name is from.

As for the other people I'm unsure of: Mother Rosa could possibly be a reference to Rosa Mystica, a name for Mary. Idk about Asmodeus's nickname Aria. Aleksandra I am also not sure about. Manon, as I've mentioned, is possibly Manon of The Craft but that feels way too contemporary in comparison to the rest of the cast so I'm also holding off until we learn more about her. Mikhail -> Archangel Michael feels just way too on the nose, especially since Archangel Michael gets mentioned frequently enough so I'm also holding off on him. Tachibana is another shrug, although according to the wiki her name uses the kanji 立花 if that's of any help to anyone. Of Leah's friends and family, I feel certain her father Hans and her friend Ella's names are taken from Grimm's Fairy Tales, what with the (not Grimm's) fairy tale references to Baba Yaga in her arc. Not sure about her brother Leo though, although it's another very common name and was the name of several popes. Minor character Charles (church guy with a mustache who I also believe has one or two files in the volumes) is another shrug. Pope Johannes and Cardinal Heisenberg are two other shrugs. Luka is another shrug also but means light so that may just be the only deal w it. Yamato and Catherine are both demons whose names aren't taken from demonological sources or just general religious sources. Not sure what the deal is with Yamato, especially since he was such a minor character. Really not sure what the deal with Catherine is either. I was totally throwing my hands in the air with her and the best I could come up with is that there is a video game called Catherine and apparently there is a succubus in that, or Catherine of Wuthering Heights but that's just because she was the most famous literary Catherine I could think of. I was trying to see if there was any connection based on her headless horse and horseman, so I looked into some stuff along those lines but couldn't find the name Catherine in relation to any Dullahan stories or in Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Abbot Nicholas I'm also not sure, but may be a reference to Saint Nicholas of Myra.

I will say, while I was looking up Saint Nicholas of Myra, I found that one of his most famous legends is about trying to sneak money to a father who'd lost all of his money, could not longer afford dowries for his three daughters, and so the daughters were going to have to become sex workers (the father's role in this varies in the stories I was seeing, with some portraying him as more reluctant and others stating he would sell them to a brothel with less of an emphasis on reluctance. None of the stories I saw seemed to have any real interest in what the daughters thought about all of this whole situation, although to be fair I only came across a few) (this is also where Santa putting gifts in stockings came from apparently?). This could totally be a coincidence in terms of naming, but it did make me take note of it. But, again, he could be called Nicholas for completely unrelated reasons, and in reference to another Nicholas. Saint Nicholas of Trani, for example, was a Saint who repeated the Kyrie over and over again so much that his mother worried he was possessed, which again, is another hmm moment for me what with Nicholas ekuoto's possession. If anyone has any suggestions for any of these characters, or anyone I may have missed, I'd love to hear it! I tried going through the character poll to try and avoid missing anyone but who knows haha.

Anyways, that's all for now! I've got a meta on the image of the forests in the story in the works but I think I'm going to hold off on it until we get more Baba Yaga. I also have another meta prepped for when the latest case files are translated. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I parsed through a google translate of them and there's some really interesting stuff in there.

Citations:

Gibson, Marion. Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials. Scribner, 2024.

Wood, Juliette. “Virgil and Taliesin: The Concept of the Magician in Medieval Folklore.” Folklore, vol. 94, no. 1, 1983, pp. 91–104. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1260172. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.

Was too lazy to write this citation but the version of Michelet's book I read: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31420

[perfectwitchcrown]

went back through the manga bc i missed barbara. this panelling is driving me CRAZY. same expression, same pose....

dude. how many times did leah have to endure the last words from someone she loved (forced into this position by literally the same villain no less). they only wanted the best for her... none of them wanted her to worry in their final moments..

leah's survivor guilt is obviously tremendous, but i genuinely do think if barbara had died here that would've been the straw to break the camel's back. we'd lose leah too one way or another (mentally or physically)

thinking about how she chose barbara over her own personal revenge, how it was a joint-operation to send beezlebub back to gehenna (and priest-kun lost when he was fighting him on his own too all those years ago) something something love triumphs in the end. you're right mother rosa (thinking about that rly good post someone made about love in mtefil)

[perfectwitchcrown]

something i think about a lot is how despite verge’s perceived immaturity, how despite how childish and detached he portrays himself, he’s never really grown out of that self-sacrificial caretaker, shouldering the weight of it all so those he cares for don’t have to suffer

despite being a relatively new witch (charlotte has been active for at least 200 years, while verge has only been around for about a decade), verge appears to be their main leader. he’s the one sent to capture aria, he’s the one that’s in charge of the demon lord’s remains, he’s the one that leads their rituals and sacrifices, he’s the one behind the main orders everyone instantly knows to pay attention to. charlotte and manon are clearly highly-regarded/highly-ranked in their own right, but they still abide by verge’s orders at the end of the day

again, charlotte has been a witch for much longer than verge. she was his mentor, even. but when the church attacks, verge’s first instinct is to get in front of her. he does the same thing with dante in chapter 79–it’s in his nature to put himself directly in harm’s way to protect others. verge is showy and childish and bratty because it keeps attention on him. it’s exactly what he did as a child, keeping the church’s eyes on him and him alone so none of the kids in his care had to sacrifice themselves in the same way. while i don’t doubt that some of the exorcists he killed were for self-defense, or because they were corrupt in the way his other victims were, i wouldn’t be surprised if it was just another way to paint a target on his back. no matter what the other witches did, the church would always target him the most for such a crime. verge is a leader, yes, but he leads to keep others safe before all else. a leader will be the one targeted the most, not his subordinates

and we know it works! verge is the only witch the church directly names as a target. yes, they still attack other witches, other sabbaths, but it’s clear that verge is the witch they fear/abhor the most (up until the baba yaga reveal, but even then, he’s the one at the head of her revival). everything verge has ever done has boiled down to his core need to protect and place the burden himself alone

[perfectwitchcrown]

Ekuoto Witches' Sacrifices

Cw/Tw: Mention of in-canon CSA, SA, suicidality and violence/death

I’m not sure if anyone else has caught this, but when I was rereading Ekuoto for my witch meta I noticed something about one of the individuals we see the witches sacrifice and wanted to discuss it below the read more. I'm not sure if others have caught it or not, I only did because I was reading through it very rapidly this go around, so I thought it might be worth bringing up. A warning again that this post discusses some of the more upsetting elements of Ekuoto.

So, it’s definitely very clear that the people the witches are sacrificing are people who’ve abused their position as a part of the church, especially based on this file:

Like, the people who are being killed are so awful that whoever wrote this, who is aligned with the church, is only able to halfheartedly muster any hopes for their return. In the Beelzebub arc we see that the witches have sacrificed a number of people to Beelzebub, and we actually see them sacrifice one of them. They strip him and drive a stake up through his body.

The part that I'm not sure I've seen anyone catch is that I am almost certain that this is the exact same man who we see in Belphegor’s array of images he showed to Priest in chapter 76 I think? Somewhere around there. In the panel where we see the POV of various people who want to die, one is from the POV of a child who is being assaulted by a man, and there's also a priest in the corner. On my first read through I noticed it, but only thought of it in terms that we would likely be touching on the topic of abuse in the church (which then was solidified not many chapters later). On my second read through I noticed that the man in that panel has the same haircut and body hair as the man we see the Witches sacrifice much earlier in the story that I've included above. I haven't included a screenshot of the panel, but as I mentioned, I believe it's chapter 76, or at least around there.

I’m not sure if we’re supposed to view this man appearing twice in the narrative so far (once as he's getting executed, and once in Bel's image of the perspectives of people who wish to die when Priest was a young child) as an indication that one of the witches knew or was victimized by this man, or whether it is just supposed to serve as confirmation that the people they’re killing really are awful people. I could potentially see it going either way. Either way, I thought it was an interesting detail, as there’s many chapters in between, so it seems like an intentional reuse of the character design. With context, the manner in which he's sacrificed, taking the form of violent penetration, also seems potentially intentional.

[perfectwitchcrown]

When I first read the first file I had assumed the person in the dream was Belphegor since that's the only person we've seen pop up in dreams, but that didn't really make sense. With the newest set of files though, it's definitely whoever was behind Priest's conception, wasn't it? I wonder why they want Baba Yaga dead?

[perfectwitchcrown]

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love - Witches part 2

Welcome to part two of the witches meta! Here's a link to part 1 of the meta: Part One.

Content warnings for discussion of sexual violence, execution, images of cartoon nudity and violence (all Ekuoto panels), also major spoilers for Ekuoto and minor spoilers for Berserk, the movie Perfect Blue, and the movie The Craft

Witchcraft and Gender: From Old Hags to Magical Girls

Back to overall discussions of witchcraft, I’d like to cover the issue of gender. Usually, when people are talking about witches, they are imagined as women. It is important to ask why that is.

In Early Modern Germany, people of any gender could be accused of witchcraft, however “Menopausal women and post-menopausal women were disproportionately represented amongst the victims of the witch craze,” which Roper associates with the link between reproduction and social status among women (Roper Witch Craze 160-161). Lara Apps and Andrew Gow in “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft,” argue that while witches were conceptualized as being of any gender, they became associated with women due to the elaborated concept of witchcraft’s idea of a demonic pact—women were misogynistically stereotyped as being easier to trick, so then the Devil is easier able to trick them into becoming witches (Apps and Gows 118-119). Of course, this is not true of all regions at all times—in Iceland, Russia, Finland, and Estonia, for example, more men were accused of witchcraft than women (Ryan 49, 73, 83). However, I think it’s relevant to talk about as the idea of witches as women has carried over into the modern era, and I think its explored in Ekuoto.

In Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, gendered stereotypes and the way they can be baked into language has been explored in chapter 10 of the Leviathan arc. In that chapter, Leviathan notes that envy (嫉妬) has the radical meaning woman in it twice (女). We can understand then that this is commentary on the way that “envy” is societally coded as a feminine trait. I’m not able to check all of the Japanese chapters as they’re paywalled, but I checked the Japanese description of volume nine, and the word for witch it uses is 魔女, which also contains “woman” in it. This is the standard way of writing the Japanese word for witch, but because of the earlier scene, I think it is important to take note of.

We should understand the idea of misogyny as essential to our understanding of the witches —not that they’re all women, but that in opposition to the church, which is formulated as patriarchal, they are those oppressed by the patriarchy. Bécu, for example, is a new witch and formerly worked as a sex worker. Her reasons for joining the witch’s Sabbath are repeatedly shown to deal with gender oppression and seeking freedom from it—in chapter 17 she is shown reading from the First Epistle to the Corinthians—specifically, the section on women being silent—before tossing it into a bonfire and joining the Sabbath. Later, we see her state that she thought the Sabbath “was a gathering for those tired of societal virtues and bindings.”  

Charlotte, too makes a really interesting statement in the above image in regards to gender. I couldn’t double check the Japanese chapter (paywalled…) but based on the comments it does seem she uses 魔法少女, so she’s fully talking about Magical Girls as in the genre.

In Kumiko Saito’s article “‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” she discusses the ways in which the Magical Girl genre has evolved. Some of the key points for our discussion is that the genre’s origins were partially influenced out of the success of the American show Bewitched (so Western constructions of witchcraft bear a relationship) while Toei was trying to expand its children’s animated television programming (Saito 147) She breaks down three key time frames of the genre, arguing that “The dual context of magical girl anime, as children’s programs that convey messages about gender roles reflecting standardized social norms and as a stand-alone vortex of representations operated by visual fetishism of young female bodies, may respectively belong to the two different eras of the 1960s to the 1980s, but today the genre has grown to easily incorporate both contexts and beyond” (Saito 147). The 1960s era of magical girl stories is conceptualized as one focused largely on the freedom of youth before marriage, fighting enemies who are coded through “heavy makeup and obsessed with careerism” as “women who failed to be a wife or a mother” while targeting a young girl audience, then losing this focus in the 1980s as otaku culture was born and adult male audiences began to be targeted as well (Saito 145-146, 148, 156-157). Gender and how gender is performed then have really heavy histories in this genre.

I personally thought the connection with the idol industry was an interesting way of thinking about it, because there’s a similar fetishization of purity and youth. In the movie Perfect Blue, for example, where an idol’s attempt to move from idealized, consumable, virginial purity to an acting career in which she is presented as sexual (but in a way that is associated with lack of agency), is met with extreme violence by a former fan. Betrayal is felt over this change—neither of which have any real relationship to the woman’s identity but are rather marketing aspects. Highly recommend this movie, although I also recommend checking out the content warnings before you watch as there’s some very heavy scenes.

Charlotte is making a statement on that sort of fetishization of purity, and I think its interesting that as nasty as the bestiality element of it is, its also locating the power of her sexuality as completely outside of heterosexual bonds. She’s simultaneously sexual, and unavailable to men (although her relationship with Vergilius complicates this I think). She is neither fetishizable through ideas of purity or sexual objectification.

The commentary on familiars is also interesting—witch’s familiars are both a historical aspect of witchcraft beliefs and of contemporary magical girls. Historically, familiars were most prominent in English witchcraft beliefs, where they appeared as “demons in corporeal form” (Parish 1-2). The animals that came up the most were “mice, cats, dogs, and even toads” (Parish 5). Within the English context, they also represent an inversion of motherly duty, as the witches would suckle them their blood (Parish 7). In terms of Ekuoto’s familiars, I think they bear similarity to the ones reported in Basque witchcraft beliefs, where “Basque toad familiars are decorated and dressed in little colourful outfits,” the outfits being something unique to the region’s beliefs.

Magical girls in anime also of course also often have mascots (familiars). I’m not entirely sure how this developed. Sally the Witch’s manga, which started in 1966, had a magical crow/younger brother named Cub. I haven’t watched or read the series, but it sounds like he stays in younger brother form most of the time? Akko Chan (1962) has a cat, but to my understanding the cat is not really a familiar? Regardless, magical mascots are a pretty standard aspect to the genre.

As to why the Ekuoto’s familiars look like axolotls with chameleon tongues: I don’t know. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

The Punishment of Witches

Another thing that’s important to keep in mind about witchcraft is jurisdiction—when we talk about the trials and punishment of witches, who was doing the punishing? The answer is—that depends on the time and place.

Witchcraft was prosecuted both in secular and religious courts in various parts of Europe for a long time. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII’s bull Summis desiderantes tried to strengthen and clarify authority over witchcraft prosecution in Germany over two inquisitors, as their authority had been overlapping both with secular courts and clerics of individual dioceses (Levack 137).

However, non-Catholic nations also had witch trials. Scotland in the 1590s, for example, had witch trials conducted through secular systems—“most witchcraft trials were in special local courts held by virtue of commissions of justiciary,” this power emerging from the crown (Goodare 240-241). There is, of course, the famous Salem witch trials in Puritan Massachusetts. In medieval Russia, where the Orthodox Church was the major religious power, there weren’t a ton of witches prosecuted, but there still were some: “From the published records, it would appear that in the seventeenth century there were a hundred or so court cases in which accusations of magic features” (Ryan 66-68). Court cases in Russia were handled by the church up until the implementation of the Voinskii artikul by Peter the Great, when it first entered secular military law (Ryan 62-67,70).

That is to say, even when there was some level of continuity to witchcraft beliefs, the authorities involved in prosecuting these cases could be wildly different based on region and time—and sometimes, multilayered within their own area.

This extended to the way in which witches were punished when found guilty. Cornell University’s exhibit “The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections” places the number of executed witches in Europe from between 1400 to 1750 at 50,000-100,000 (Crime and Punishment). Legal proceedings did not follow assumptions of innocence—it was the job of the accused to prove their innocence (Crime and Punishment). Execution methods depended on region as well. Burning was largely popular, although in England you would be hanged (Crime and Punishment). Burning’s popularity was due to witchcraft’s associations with heresy, as burning was also the execution method for heretics (Gaskill 66).

Now, not all accussed of being witches were found guilty—and not all found guilty of witchcraft were executed either. This depended on region. Overall, across Europe, around half of those who went to trial were executed (Gaskill 66). Elsewhere, however, the numbers could really range—“in the Pays de Vaud, the execution rate was 90%,” while “Spain’s largest witch-hunt involved a staggering 1,900 suspects, of whom just eleven were condemned” (Gaskill 66-67).

Extra: Names of the Witches

Fun little thing on where the names of the different witch’s may have come from (all of these r like. Majorly a stretch lmfao). Also none of these will be cited bc I’m lazy and also most of these are easy to find information on in comparison to the rest of the information in this meta. I’m also excluding Vergilius because we already know.:

Charlotte

A French/Italian name, feminine form of Charles. Honestly, it’s such a common name that I have no clue if there’s any reason it was chosen. Goethe is referenced early in Ekuoto (Priest is reading poems by him in the first chapter) and Charlotte is the name of the woman Werther is in love with in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, so it could be that, but that’s a complete guess. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (of “The Yellow Wallpaper “fame) also wrote a short story called “When I Was a Witch.” This could also potentially be a source of the name. Unsure, but for thematic reasons I could see it being possible. Gilman was a feminist, but also a eugenicist, and both of these ideas are reflected in the short story. Her brand of feminism is also very late 19th century early 20th century white feminism, so like just as a warning to anyone looking to read her fiction keep that in mind.

 Here’s a link to this short story: https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/miscellaneous/when-i-was-a-witch/

The TLDR ; Narrator becomes a witch. She makes a series of cruel wishes that come true because she’s a witch. She then decides to wish for her idea of a feminist utopia on earth (this image is shaped by an emphasis on ideas of motherhood and eugenics -> that women will shape the world through reproductive capabilities by breeding out “bad” men) and it doesn’t happen because “this magic which had fallen on me was black magic-and I had wished white” and then all her witchcraft gets undone. With the witch’s being framed as trying to overturn patriarchal society, I could potentially see this as an influence, but it’s kind of a niche short story. Also I don’t see the witch’s getting framed as eugenicists, unless the connection we’re supposed to draw is with the deliberate killing of bad men as sacrifices ?? Idk

Who knows tho. Charlotte is such a common name. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Erskine & Cyril

Ok I searched so hard for potential origins for their names but was struggling to find anything. I was centering on the Paisley witches, where stuff happened near Erskine in Scotland, and Cyril of Alexandria, but both of these felt like massive massive massive stretches. Then, recently, I saw this tweet by user @ mizuno_awa: https://x.com/mizuno_awa/status/1879681767172698205

They source the names Erskine and Cyril to the Oscar Wilde short story “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which I had not previously read (sorry Oscar Wilde), but it’s completely spot on. This short story is available through Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/773), so I highly recommend checking it out, but here’s my short explanation of why it’s an interesting thing for their names to reference for those who don’t want to read the short story

William Shakespeare wrote a series of sonnets. A section of them are referred to as the ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets (whether they should be considered a sequence is one of many things Shakespeareans argue about) This sequence focuses on a young man that the poet has a romantically (and erotically, depending on how you read some of the poems) charged relationship with. The collection of sonnets (including both the Fair Youth poems and the Dark Lady poems) is dedicated to someone known as “Mr. W.H..” Some scholars believe Mr. W.H. to be the fair youth the fair youth sonnets are about (Shakespeareans argue over this also). There are several different major camps as to who Mr. W.H. is -> one major group argues it’s the Earl of Southampton, and the other camp argues that it may be the Earl of Pembroke. There is an additional camp that argues, due to wordplay in some of the sonnets, it’s a boy named Willie Hughes, but there’s no Willie Hughes that Shakespeare on record knew so like who knows.

Oscar Wilde wrote his short story in conversation with this theory. In the short story, a man named Erskine tells the unnamed narrator about a friend of his, Cyril, who was apparently incredibly pretty (there’s a whole paragraph about his family background that just devolves into describing how good looking he was) and became consumed with trying to prove the Willie Hughes theory, including by having a portrait of the supposed boy actor forged, before taking his own life. The narrator becomes obsessed with the theory, tries to prove it, convinces Erskine but then becomes himself unconvinced. Erskine then dies too, and the forged portrait passes from Erskine’s possession to the narrator’s. It’s basically a creepy haunted painting/Shakespeare theory story, like if the Ring was about a twink’s cursed Shakespeare theory instead of a haunted video tape.

So the interesting part then is that this is a short story focused on queer readings of Shakespeare being examined by queer coded characters, written by a queer man. It’s not as on the nose as Dorian Gray, but I think I laughed out loud when Erskine starts talking about how Cyril once played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (the main character of a play who spends a significant portion of it crossdressing and hitting on the guy she likes, while going by the name Ganymede. Good ol Elizabethan queercoding, that Wilde definitely knew about, since he engages with it as well in Dorian Gray). Anyways, naming these two after this short story is amazing queer coding of these characters Arima Aruma you’re so funny to me ur mind is so big

Bécu

A French surname, famously held by Madame du Barry (a courtesan who became Louis XV’s mistress). Seeing as how Becu is a former sex worker from France, this seems likely. The account I list in the Erskine and Cyril section drew the same conclusion as me.

Manon

A real name, but also in the 1996 movie The Craft a bunch of teenage witches worship a deity named Manon. I went and watched the movie for this meta LMFAO but basically they view Manon as a being outside of the dichotomy of god and the devil. Each of the girls has picked up witchcraft for a variety of reasons that all have to do with their outsider status in their private Catholic school. The main character gets invited to join their coven, and they start taking magical revenge on those who hurt them, but it starts to spiral out of control. Manon is also a common enough name though that I could see there being another origin to her name.  

Works Cited:

Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft” In Male Witches in Early Modern Europe, 118–50. Manchester University Press, 2003. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155j84b.10.

“Crime and Punishment.” The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections. Cornell University, 2017. rmc.library.cornell.edu/witchcraft/exhibition/punishment/index.html#modalClosed. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Forrester, Sibelan. Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

Garrett, Julia M. “Witchcraft and Sexual Knowledge in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 32–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43857912.

Gaskill, Malcolm. Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Goodare, Julian. “The Framework for Scottish Witch-Hunting in the 1590s.” The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 81, no. 212, 2002, pp. 240–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25529649. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

Levack, Brian P. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2025. doi.org/10.4324/9781315715292. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Mackay, Christopher S.. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Newman, William. “Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages.” Isis, vol. 80, no. 3, 1989, pp. 423–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/234934.

Parish, Helen. “‘Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils’: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials.” Religions vol. 10, no. 2 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020134.

Ryan, W. F. “The Witchcraft Hysteria in Early Modern Europe: Was Russia an Exception?” The Slavonic and East European Review 76, no. 1 (1998): 49–84. www.jstor.org/stable/4212558.

Roper, Lyndal. “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2006): 117–41. www.jstor.org/stable/25593863.

Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze. New Haven, Yale University Press. 2004.

Saito, Kumiko. “Magic, ‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society.” The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (2014): 143–64. www.jstor.org/stable/43553398.

Saunders, Corinne. “The Middle Ages: Prohibitions, Folk Practices and Learned Magic.” In Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, NED-New edition., 59–116. Boydell & Brewer, 2010. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brqtb.6.

Sneddon, Andrew. “Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland.” Irish Economic and Social History 39 (2012): 1–25. www.jstor.org/stable/24338815.

Ugresic, Dubravka. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg. New York: Canongate U.S., 2011. Accessed January 5, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Watt, Jeffrey R. “Superstitions, Magic, and Witchcraft.” In The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva, NED-New edition., 138–61. Boydell & Brewer, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv10vm05k.10.

Weishaupt, Marina. “Mythos Walpurgisnacht: Was steckt hinter den Hexen-Sagan?.” National Geographic, 27 Apr. 2023. www.nationalgeographic.de/geschichte-und-kultur/2023/04/mythos-walpurgisnacht-was-steckt-hinter-den-hexen-sagen-tanz-in-mai. Accessed 3 February 2025.

Wilby, Emma. “Familiar Demons.” Invoking the Akelarre: Voices of the Accused in the Basque Witch-Craze, 1609-1614, Liverpool University Press, 2019, pp. 124–44. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3029v1q.13. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

“Witch Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England.” UC Berkeley Law. www.law.berkeley.edu/research/the-robbins-collection/exhibitions/witch-trials-in-early-modern-europe-and-new-england/. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Zipes, Jack. “Foreward.” Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Edited by Sibelan Forrester, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

[perfectwitchcrown]

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love – Witches Part One

Ok, I finally finished this meta! I've broken it into two posts because it was getting a little too long. I’m covering some of the literary and historical references that Ekuoto plays with in regards to its witches hehe.. Regardless of whether Arima Aruma and Fukuyama Masuku are engaging with the actual history of witchcraft beliefs or the way it’s been filtered down into the contemporary cultural consciousness, I think it’ll be fun to present the real-life inspirations behind these ideas. Scholarly sources are cited so you can feel free to check out the information I discuss, and links are provided occasionally when I got lazy. All citations are in MLA form at the end of the second part because I didn’t feel Chicago footnote format would function well on Tumblr, so I apologize for any issues with the citations as I’m rusty with MLA. Take this all with a grain of salt, as I’m not an expert and also had to cover a lot of regions/periods of time. Hope you enjoy!

Content warnings for discussion of sexual violence, execution, images of cartoon nudity and violence (all Ekuoto panels), also major spoilers for Ekuoto and minor spoilers for Berserk, the movie Perfect Blue, and the movie The Craft

Link to Part Two of the meta (including works cited)

Witches – what did it mean to be a witch? Demonic Pacts, witch marks, and more

First off—what is a witch? This question is actually deceptively difficult to answer. For example, you can’t simply say that a witch is someone who practices magic: that’s too broad. “In September 1398 the theology faculty at the University of Paris approved a set of twenty-eight articles condemning the practice of ritual magic”—the targets of this were largely clerics (Levack 49), and there seems to have been a decent number of them (Apps and Gow 126). Those accused of witchcraft were considered distinct from these magic using priests for whom “this magic was practiced with grimoires or books of learned enchantments” (not that this was approved of by the church either) (Mackay 30-31).

What a “witch” was, is also something that could be wildly different depending on time and place. There was, however, a coalescence of ideas during the 15th century in Europe, followed by the “witch craze” of the Early Modern period (16th-18th centuries), in which there were an uptick in witch trials, provides an answer to what a witch is that has had a lasting impact in our present cultural consciousness (Witch Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England). This definition of witchcraft, then, I think, is the most relevant one to consider in this meta, although it will require a bit of generalization.

Essential to understanding this coalescence of ideas about witches is a book known as the Malleus Maleficarum, or “The Hammer of Witches,” a text on witchcraft published in 1486 by two Dominican friars, an order that focused on heresy (Mackay 1-2). Please note that mention of heresy, as it will be relevant later. How, then, did it imagine witches?

Christopher S. Mackay, in the introduction to his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, calls this construction of witchcraft “the elaborated concept of witchcraft,” and defines it as follows (this is a direct quotation I just can't format it right on Tumblr LMFAO):

A pact entered into with the Devil (and concomitant apostasy from Christianity)

Sexual relations with the Devil

Aerial flight for the purpose of attending:

An assembly presided by Satan himself (at which initiates entered into the pact, and incest and promiscuous sex were engaged in by the attendees),

The practice of maleficent magic

The slaughter of babies. (Mackay 19)

The Malleus’s construction of witchcraft “represented a special form of heresy that played an important part in Satan’s plans for the Final Days” (Mackay 33) and borrowed elements from accusations made against earlier heretical groups (Saunders 85-86). It focused on women from the lower classes as opposed to priests who were practicing magic (Mackay 30-31). Heresy is key then to understanding witchcraft in this period. The Malleus’s construction of witchcraft also had a sexual focus, repeatedly bringing up the impact of demons on the genitals (Garrett 38). For example, there’s a whole section that details whether or not witches can take your penis away. The Malleus’s findings? No, but they can cast an illusion that makes it appear as though your penis is gone (Mackay 323-329). Breathtaking.

In Ekuoto, we see that the what makes someone a witch is a demonic convent, which involves erasing their names from the book of life and writing it in the demon lord’s book of death (which I will go further into depth on in the section on Sabbaths!), receiving a seal on their body, and merging bodily fluids through kissing or sex.

This process actually is pretty faithful to early modern beliefs about how one became a witch. The Malleus describes the process as involving a “sacrilegious avowal,” in which witches either make this vow to serve the demon ceremonially “when the sorceresses come to a certain assembly on a fixed day and see the demon in the assumed guise of a human as he urges them to keep their faith to him, which would be accompanied by prosperity in temporal matters and longevity of life.” While there, a new witch-to-be would be presented, and if determined to be “ready to renounce the Most Christian Faith and Worship,” signs themselves over (as in with a literal signature) (Mackay 281, 283). Non-ceremonially, a demon might just pop up when someone is in trouble and promise to help them if they help him (Mackay 286-287). So, here we see the idea of witchcraft granting long life and a physical signing over of the self to a demon.

But, witchcraft beliefs weren’t only constructed by books like the Malleus Maleficarum—those accused of witchcraft also contributed to these beliefs in their confessions (Roper Witch Craze 117).  As historian Lyndal Roper in her book Witch Craze describes of Early Modern witch confessions from Germany, “Intercourse with the Devil was the physical counterpart of the pact with him—and it was sex with the Devil which many accused witches talked about at length, rather than the pact which, according to demonological theory, actually made them Satan’s own” (Roper Witch Craze 85). Roper speculates that a large reason for this that many accused during this time period were illiterate, and so in their confessions, sex as the form of pact appears far in confessions than physical signatures (Roper Witch Craze 85). Regardless, we can see this as where Ekuoto borrows the idea of sex or kissing as a part of the demonic convent.

Sometimes, in these confessions, we also saw that the Devil would “give the witch a special diabolical name” as a sort of reversion of the baptismal process where a Christian name would be gained (Roper Witch Craze 116). Vergilius taking a new name as a part of his demonic pact then is completely in line with historical views of witchcraft, which I think is very fun of Arima Aruma.

Another idea of that shows up regarding people becoming witches is the idea of witch’s marks and devil’s marks, which were pretty significant in English witch trials. A Devil’s mark was a mark that was believed to have been left by the Devil when the witch becomes his, while the witch’s mark was believed to be a teat that the witch would use to nurse familiars their blood, although the terms were often conflated (Garrett 49-50). In England, searching for these marks was a major part of trials, and the experience was violating, the marks often being found near women’s genitals after they had been stripped of all their clothes, and pricked repeatedly on any mark that might be a witch’s or devil’s mark (Garrett 37).

Devil’s marks have been mentioned in Ekuoto, as seen in the earlier image, although we have not had any specifically pointed out. Vergilius’s heart under his right eye is likely a devil’s mark in my opinion, as he did not have it as a child when he was not a witch. I’ll be interested in seeing if it comes up and if there’s any significance to its shape. I could totally be wrong and it could just be like make up or a tattoo or something. This under the eye heart mark isn’t original to Ekuoto—heart patches for facial application have existed at least since the 17th century (not citing out of laziness but look up beauty patches), and under the eye heart make up was like a trend back in 2019 on Tiktok—but hilariously, 2012, when Marina and the Diamonds released Electra Heart, featuring MARINA with a heart mark under her eye, is also is presumably the year Vergilius became a witch (based on Daniel’s statement in one of the chapters that he’s been active for a decade). Maybe he’s just a really big Electra Heart fan lol.

The Witch’s Sabbath

A witches Sabbath was “where witches gathered to worship the Devil, dance, feast, indulge in sexual orgies, and practice cannibalism and infanticide” (Apps and Gow 120). As previously mentioned, the book Malleus Maleficarum set the stage for a lot of early modern witch beliefs within Western Europe. This text was written within a school known as demonology, “Commonly viewed as a branch of theology, philosophy and metaphysics” (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 119). Demonological descriptions of the witches Sabbath are an example of elite construction of witchcraft beliefs, and they focused on Christianity inverted: “The witches were bent double, candles in their anus, and in the place of the kiss of peace in the Mass, they had to kiss the Devil’s anus (Roper Witch Craze 113).

Of course, as also has been mentioned before, Early Modern witchcraft beliefs were also shaped by those accused of witchcraft drawing from their own experience in confessions. The dance, an element of the witch’s Sabbath, appeared in Witch’s confessions as an inversion of their village dances (Roper Witch Craze 107-108, 111, 116). At these dances it was said that music might be played on the fiddle and the bagpipes (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 128).

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love both presents the witches Sabbaths using ideas of inversion of Christian doctrine and of social gatherings with dance and music. For one, the witches set up shop in an abandoned church in France, where they place a statue representing Beelzebub in the sanctuary. Symbolically, then, they’ve inverted the worship of God to the worship of a demon.

Additionally, you can see the Witches lined up to kiss the statue on what seems to be a phallic protrusion. They’re inverting, then, the kiss of peace the same way historically witches were thought to kiss the Devil’s anus. Roper has a description of a woodcut that bears similarity to this image, describing it like so: “At the centre of the image, witches perform the anal kiss on a giant goat, while long lines of assorted pairs of Devils and witches wind their way in a snake like spiral around the picture, playing phallic-looking bagpipes and horns” (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 137-138). Now, traditionally this kiss is delivered on the anus rather than the phallus, but I’m not an expert so I can’t speak to whether there were regional descriptions of Witch’s Sabbaths that varied that Make the Exorcist Fall in Love is drawing from. I can say, though, that Berserk’s portrayal of a witch’s Sabbath, which imagery-wise definitely seems to draw from woodblock representations, does feature the diabolic kiss being received on the phallus rather than the anus. It is possible that this scene was visual inspiration for Ekuoto’s witch’s Sabbath. For those who are interested in independently checking what I’m talking about, it’s in chapter 139 of Berserk.

Now, in the same above panel in Ekuoto, we also see that the witches are singing a song. This song is an inversion of the Anglican hymn “Holy Holy Holy”—the original lyrics, that the witch’s invert, are “Holy, Holy, Holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, Though the eye of sinful man, thy glory may not see: Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee, Perfect in power in love, and purity.” The hymn is originally about the trinitarian god, so this inverted version becomes a worship of Beelzebub.

If you want to give the original song a listen, here’s a link to a recording:

This song later also appears in the flashback to the 2011 Beelzebub fight (where, interestingly enough, an eclipse is featured very prominently. Eclipses are pretty common “ooh spooky eek” imagery but it also made me wonder if there’s potential visual influence from Berserk). This also further establishes it as a song associated with Beelzebub.

Inversion also shows up outside of the Sabbaths in Ekuoto. Dante in the below images is invoking the Trinitarian formula: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which is from Matthew 28:19 in the Bible. Verge, and other witches in Ekuoto, invert the Trinitarian formula: “in the name of the mother, the daughter, and the evil spirit.” Not only is this an example of inversion, but it also aligns with a neopagan concept, the Triple Goddess (although usually the triple Goddess is expressed as the Mother, the Daughter, and the Crone). I’m not going to cite this because I’m lazy, but if you want you can check this one out on Wikipedia. The Triple Goddess in neopagan beliefs harkens back to older religious forms where goddesses appeared in groups of three—one of these, from Hellenistic religious beliefs, is associated with witchcraft: Hecate was associated with magic, and often depicted in a triple form (Also too lazy to cite this but you can check this out also on Wikipedia in both the Triple Goddess (Neopaganism) page and the Hecate page. You can also check it out on Encyclopedia Brittanica). Interestingly, and as I’ll touch on later, Baba Yaga also sometimes appears in three forms in folklore (Forrester xxxiv).

Walpurgisnacht

Now, the description of the woodblock of a witch’s Sabbath mentioned in the previous section wasn’t of just any Sabbath—it was a Sabbath on the Brocken, where according to legend witches would have a Sabbath every year on Walpurgisnacht (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 137-138).

Walpurgisnacht is on April 30 into May 1st, and is an actual real life religious holiday, celebrating the canonization of Saint Walpurga. It’s celebrated through festivals, some of which involve dancing around bonfires. In the 17th century, a book written by Johannes Praetorius cited the peak of the Harz mountains in Germany, the Brocken, as a site in which witches would meet for a Sabbath on the eve of May 1st (Weishaupt). It was this book, the Blockesberges Verrichtung, that features the woodblock mentioned in the Sabbath section, and would inspire some of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s drama of the mind, Faust (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 135-138). Faust also has a famous presentation of Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken (Weishaupt).

So yeah, Ekuoto’s mention of Walpurgisnacht is in reference to this! Moving on to what they’ve also mentioned in conjunction to Walpurgisnacht:

Baba Yaga

First and foremost, Baba Yaga has nothing to do with Walpurgisnacht in folklore, this is an invention of Ekuoto. The Harz mountains are in Germany, whereas Baba Yaga is a figure in Slavic folklore.  

Stories in which Baba Yaga appears often have several themes: “she lives in the forest, which is her domain” (Zipes VIII); that her house has chicken legs (Forrester XXVII); that her “house may be surrounded with a fence of bones, perhaps topped with skulls (Forrester XXVIII). She sometimes also has a black cat (Forrester XXVIII). Jack Zipes, in the foreword to Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales, describes her as “not just a dangerous witch but also a maternal benefactress, probably related to a pagan goddess” and “inscrutable and so powerful that she does not owe an allegiance to the Devil or God or even to her storytellers” (Zipes VIII). Sibelan Forrester, in that same book, describes her as “both a cannibal and a kind of innkeeper, a woman who threatens but also often rewards” (Forrester XXXV). Skulls with light coming out of their eye sockets shows up in the fairy tale Vasilia the Beautiful—“the eyes of all the skulls on the fence lit up, and the whole clearing became light as midday” (Forrester XXXVIII, XLIV, 175).

Now, so far in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, we’ve been presented with Baba Yaga as a witch who Satan calls different from the other witches, who tried purifying the angry souls of those killed by the church until she became corrupted by their rage and desired the power to kill god, and has at least three contracts with Satan, Asmodeus, and Beelzebub (but not Leviathan). She also appears as a black cat.

The parts that most clearly draw upon traditional Baba Yaga folklore are the skulls, the chicken legged house in the middle of the woods, and the idea of her being a total wildcard. As far as I can tell, the backstory they’ve given her about purifying souls killed by the church is completely original to Ekuoto, although it could be in reference to either some piece of folklore or literature that I’m not familiar with. Traditionally, the bones and skulls in Baba Yaga’s home are presumably a threat that the hero might next be a victim of hers (Forrester XXIX). Here, they are victims of the church.

The closest thing I have been able to find is the invented backstory is from Dubravka Ugrešić’s book, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, published as part of the Canongate Myth Series (themed around reinterpreting international mythology): “That they would finally stop bowing down to men with bloodshot eyes, men who are guilty of killing millions of people, and who still have not had enough. For they are the ones who leave a trail of human skills behind them, yet people’s torpid imaginations stick those skulls on the fence of a solitary old woman who lives on the edge of the forest” (Ugrešić’ 243). Here also the skulls are affiliated not with her cannibalism but the killings of patriarchal power. The book was originally published in Croatian and has several different languages it is available in translation, although, as far as I can tell, Japanese is not one of them, so I don’t know how familiar Arima Aruma would be with it.

I’m also fascinated by the beheaded, veiled skeletal figure with the large stomach wound we see who points towards Baba Yaga’s house. Baba Yaga is sometimes presented as a mother (Forrester XXXVIII) and the large stomach opening to me almost looks like the surgical removal of a child from the womb, although that may be a stretch.

Contemporary c-sections are also often horizontal, although historically in Europe and the Americas, up until developments in surgery and gynecology in the nineteenth century, they were only performed when the mother was dead or had no hope for survival. The images I’ve seen depicting c-sections in the 15th and 16th centuries seem to depict vertical incisions though, which lines up more with this figure’s wound. (I’m not citing these but will provide links: https://www.webmd.com/baby/what-happens-during-c-section; https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/cesarean/part1.html ). I think it would also line up with some of the other imagery that’s been established in series, such as the wound/vagina/pregnancy image combo we got in the first chapter with Asmodeus.

It's also been implied that she had something to do with binding Beelzebub from entering Germany:

That file really closely follows the contours of a Baba Yaga fairy tale—getting lost in the forest, the flaming bone torch like in Vasilia the Beautiful. I’m extremely fascinated by the way in which Baba Yaga is being presented in Ekuoto and can’t wait to see more about her motivations.

Continued in Part Two

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:(

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Ekuoto 81 thoughts

Spoilers below! CWs: references to abuse, suicidal ideation/suicide

Before this week's chapter I had been wondering how we might see the Dante and Vergilius fight resolve since Dante had so clearly expressed that this was the end of the line chapters ago and Bel had just been defeated, but I somehow did not expect this to be what happened… :’)

Tbh I think he’s going to live if only bc I think that there was a reason we were shown that Vergilius has healing powers when he kissed Charlotte chapters ago. Maybe this is just cope tho lmao. On the other hand, I’d be really interested to see Priest’s (and Barbara and Leah, who were in France with Dante) reaction to Dante being dead so I’m torn lol.

I think it's interesting how often Dante's advice to fall in love from the first chapter has come up in the series, and how tonally different Priest vs Dante treat that moment in this chapter. Dante sort of broods on it and considers it a curse he's left on Priest, whereas Priest kind of brushes it off to Imuri as uncool advice from an unreliable adult. On the other hand, I think it’s super interesting that Priest seems to consider the hug Dante gave him as having saved his life as a child. In chapter three, when Priest saves the children in the aquarium, he similarly gives them a hug.

I’m sure a lot of it has to do w most of his experience with adults throughout his life involved physical pain (the abuse he suffered from his father, the abuse he suffered from the church, etc) so like I am sure positive physical contact was not something he really experienced. But also, this moment in the first chapter comes after Priest breaks down about how hard he finds living--outside of Bel, who Priest had forgotten about at this point, Dante was likely one of the first adults that actually listened to his cry for help as a child and saw his idealization of religious martyrdom that was really, at its core, suicidal ideation.

Dante’s whole thing about being tired of chasing Vergilius is interesting too. It uses the same language as when he spoke of his failure to chase after Vergilius in chapter 20. Vergilius naming himself Vergilius is also such a "come follow me" move since Virgil was Dante’s guide in Inferno. Interested to see how this shift in the dynamic affects Vergilius.

Also excited to see what happens w Marco next chapter. His relationship w Priest seems fascinating to me bc it’s kinda hard to tell what level of distance they have from each other. Marco completely idolizes him, and it’s also been mentioned that he was present at the previous offscreen exorcism of Mammon prior to the start of the series, and he’s also visible in a flashback panel to that exorcism. They've known each other for like three years then so it's kind of interesting how obsessive Marco is and how little he actually knows about Priest as a person for having known him for all that time.

Even in the first chapter we're shown that Marco's understanding of Priest is completely misguided, where he assumes Priest's studying the bible when he's actually reading poetry by Goethe and Song of Songs (the second of which is in the bible, but the unifying theme between the works he's reading is romantic love. Also, this is the dorkiest form of romantic texts for him to be interested in LMAO).

Also can’t wait to see what goes down w Leah Barbara and the others. While Marco looks pissed, Leah looks more worried than anything else, and Mikhail looks sort of solemn. Daniel sort of has resting bitch face so idk what’s going through his mind. Last we saw of them all, Leah and Barbara very much dodged mentioning that Imuri is a demon and said to focus on fighting the witches first. Now that they’ve clearly finished with that, I wonder if they’ve told the rest or if they’re still hiding it. Either way Marco would be pissed since Priest did work with Bel.

Anyways, what a chapter, I'm so excited to see what happens next chapter. If Imuri and Priest have to be on the run from the church for awhile I wonder if Imuri's friend Cass from the file extras might finally make an appearance...

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It's ok it's ok

A comedy Is a tragedy with a good ending we just need an underworld arc DON'T PANIC!!!!

Hes ok guys... Just taking a nap

Whoever decided this:

EVIL

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Ekuoto Chapter 80 - Life is Wonderful!

This last chapter :').

While browsing the comments of the Japanese release of the latest chapter I saw this comment:

Now, I was like huh? What movie? And then was like, oh my god, it's totally It's A Wonderful Life, isn't it?

The Japanese title for this chapter was 素晴らしき哉、人生, and I sort of has to look it up bc my beginners level Japanese couldn't make sense of the adjective ending happening here, but from what my rudimentary google searching led me to find is that its an old school conjugation form to attach adjectives to nouns. Basically, the sentence reads as like "How wonderful, life!" or, more naturally, Life is Wonderful, as the translators went with. (As a fun note, 素晴らしい meaning wonderful is also the last word Luka says in this chapter, as すばあしー）

So, just to double check, I looked it up, and instead found out there's two films with this title. One is It's a Wonderful Life.

The other is Collateral Beauty with Will Smith?? It cuts the kanji for 哉 and just renders it in hiragana, but I have no idea how that got translated into 素晴らしきかな、人生. Like the stories r very similar so I kinda get it but also lmao

As to which film Ekuoto is referencing, the title is exactly the same as the Japanese translation of It's a Wonderful Life, which is also a significantly more famous film (although idk how much in Japan ? ), so it seems more likely. Both films are about depressed protagonists learning to value life again, although the Will Smith movie is also very specifically about someone who's depression is rooted in the loss of his child prior to the start of the film.

In conclusion: ???? Probably a It’s a Wonderful Life reference, but maybe also a Collateral Beauty reference?

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Dante and Betrayal in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

Ok so now that chapter 79 has come out I really want to discuss something I think is kind of interesting as a through line between Dante's Inferno and Dante in Make The Exorcist Fall in Love. This is mostly just word vomit haha. Also, asterisks indicate footnotes that I've left towards the bottom of the post!

Cw: discussion of sexual violence, victim blaming, and homophobia. Also, image of cartoon gore (when priest pulled out his eye in the first chapter) after the read more

In the Divine Comedy, the closer Dante the pilgrim moves to the center of hell, the more intense Dante the poet is casting the sins being punished there are. So, Dante starts in Limbo, which he presents as containing the least serious of sins, then continues on through a variety of different sins. The ninth and final circle of hell, containing what Dante the poet felt was the most serious of sins, is treachery. In the notes to their translation of the Inferno, Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander write that "The three most gravely punished sinners of the poem are Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus (founder of the Church), as well as Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Julius Caesar (the first ruler of the empire" (639).

Dante Alighieri presents betrayal then as the worst sin possible, which I think has been carried through into Ekuoto Dante's perception of whatever happened with Vergilius in the past.

Specifically, I’m thinking of their conversation in chapter 20. Verge identifies Dante’s powers as relating to Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt when fleeing Sodom.

I think Dante’s response is pretty interesting for several reasons. For one, based on the paneling and what we see, he’s identifying Sodom with the church, not with Verge. Verge, as someone who fled then is Lot, and Dante positions himself as Lot’s wife, which is both fascinating in the way he’s presenting their relationship and that it implies that he views his decision to stay with the church as a decision of weakness, just as Lot’s wife turning to look back at Sodom is considered spiritual weakness.

It was his betrayal of Verge then that he considers his sin.

Frankly though I wonder if there’s an element of miscommunication between the two of them as well in regard to this.

This is the part where I get super speculative, because we still don’t know what happened in the panel depicted (although I wonder if we’ll be finding out soon). But, just based on the few things we’ve seen, there’s a couple things I’d like to propose.

I don’t think Dante and Vergilius in have ever explicitly told each other that they love each other. I could be totally wrong about this, but based on Dante’s reactions in this chapter, both to the homophobia he experienced and not wanting to talk about it with Verge, and his shyness around romantically charged physical contact with him (it’s Verge who holds his hand, Dante doesn’t hold it back), and just based on the fact that they were kids, I think whatever splintering in their relationship occurred it was before either of them had actually been able to verbally express what they meant to each other. They reaaaaally read to me as having still been in that first gay crush where you’re sort of together but also not really acknowledging it stage of their relationship.*

I wonder if Verge may have been victim blamed in some regard for what happened with that priest we see. I could see Arima Aruma making commentary on the way victims of sexual exploitation can be blamed if they’re “imperfect” victims. Personally, I don’t trust Abbott Nicholas like even a little bit in how he handles situations, and just based on the expression Dante has as a kid looking back at him, I wonder if he may have said something pretty fucked. Or, at the very least, not helpful at all towards Verge, and tinged in some way, by homophobia. Like, ultimately, at his age Verge was not capable of consenting whatsoever to what was happening. I wonder if because Verge was accepting money in return, Abbott Nicholas may have blamed him partially for what happened**

All of these proposals in consideration, then, I think potentially color Verge’s comment when he says “how cruel” in chapter 20. I wonder if Dante’s betrayal may have also been a deeper betrayal of their relationship -> not just that he didn’t go with him, but that he may have not acknowledged the relationship they had. In other words, if Abbott Nicholas may have victim blamed Verge in a way that also centered his queerness and Dante froze.

Returning to the conversation in chapter 20 then, if, from Verge’s perspective, Dante’s powers reference sexual intercourse between men, and Dante may have never fully communicated how he felt for Verge, that how cruel may have been because he was taking it as further shaming him for his own assault -> if the sin is having had sex with a man, and if Verge may have been blamed for his rape, then Dante’s powers may come across as further victim blaming towards Verge, that because Verge was sexually abused by a man as a form of survival sex work (not that he could have ever consented to that at his age), Verge has “committed sin,” whereas Dante has not (presuming that Dante has never had sex with a man, which like, idk but idk if Verge knows either).

Dante’s response, “that’s not my sin” then, wouldn’t actually refute that to Verge. It would just tie into that. “No, I’ve never had sex with a man, that’s not my sin” -> which also would function as a further rejection of the feelings they held for each other.

On the other hand, I don’t think that’s how Dante meant it. I think Dante’s perspective on it not having been his sin, especially with how he follows it up, and with what he said towards the beginning of the series about love, is that he doesn’t view his feelings towards Verge as sin at all. Rather, it was his failure to take his side that he views as his sin. His response he may have meant both as a “what I felt for you wasn’t sin” and a “what happened to you wasn’t your fault.” The panel frames the church as Sodom, so the sin of what occurred to Verge is not homosexuality, but rape, and Dante clearly places the blame with the priest.

And to tie into this, I think it’s significant that it’s not Dante’s personal money he uses to pay women at brothels to offer them the financial means to leave sex work should they choose, it’s church funds.***

TL;DR

To sum all this up, I think Dante and Verge may both have skewed understandings of what went wrong in their relationship and how they felt towards each other, but I think the idea that Dante betrayed Verge is central to it. I’m not sure that Vergilius thinks that Dante betrayed him though. I think this is Dante’s perspective of whatever happened that we still don’t know about. I am interested in seeing if we get any further information about their past in the next chapter or if we won’t be seeing anymore for a while.

Footnotes

*I think further in support of this is Verge’s reaction at the bowling alley when Priest falsely confirms that Dante is having sex with women in brothels. He teases Dante in their fight in chapters 20-21 for being worked up over him, but honestly, I don’t think he has confidence that his feelings for him in childhood were reciprocated in the same way.

**In support of this I think we should consider Dante’s reaction following Priest’s assault in the first chapter. Priest blames himself for his assault—“I looked upon a woman with lust. I am deserving of this punishment”—and Dante immediately thinks of Abbott Nicholas, and then immediately tries to impress upon Priest that consensual sexual desire isn’t wrong.

***Dante seems to consider his position within the church as one that enables him to decrease exploitation the most. Daniel, in one of the files, refers to the policy (that he instituted) post Mother Rosa death of banning the weak from serving as exorcists, as having resulted in the exploitation of children, who now make up the bulk of the exorcists. If Dante leaves the church at this point, he would be doing so as one of the remaining adult exorcists, leaving the work to the rest of the children

Random Extra Thoughts:

I’ve seen speculation that shit may have gone down between the two of them in-between the four year timeskip after the first chapter since Dante has become noticeably more pessimistic. Personally, based on Verge knowing about Dante going to brothels, and based on Dante knowing to look for Verge by speaking to sex workers at brothels, I wonder if they may have seen each other at a brothel. Vergilius would’ve been a witch by this point. I’ve had to go through parts of the manga again, but he’s been a witch for at least ten years at this point. Which is an interesting timeline, since Dante and Mother Rosa were both present 11 years ago at the fight against Beelzebub. Much to consider

Also, Dante and Verge keep referencing each other’s respective ages (that Dante has been aging and Verge is still young) and tying it not just to appearance but also behavior. With the potential miscommunication in regards to their feelings with each other, I sort of also wonder if Verge associates their relationship with their youth as well, and may assume that the romantic element to their love for each other is something Dante considers himself to have grown out of.

Tying into the above, I think it’s significant that we the audience haven’t yet seen an ordinary adult who is openly gay. Verge and the other witches who are queer (Erskine and Cyril based on their presence sharing a broom naked in the background of the witch’s sabbath, other various witches who’ve been similarly paired off) have all frozen themselves in time. Dante is gay, but based on his behavior at the brothels, not out. Also, and this could just be early series wonkiness, but when Abbott Nicholas tells Dante in the first chapter not to introduce Priest to a variety of vices, womanizing comes up as one of them. So, like, whatever happened in the past, I don’t think Dante has ever acknowledged himself as gay to Abbott Nicholas or the larger community.

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I’m working on another piece of meta so I’ve been going back and rereading bits and pieces. I completely missed this the first time lol, but this painting that Mammon is looking at is John Martin’s The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (1852).