Chapter 1
By: Alexander Holmes
This review of Amnesia The Dark Descent, I should say up top, is a retrospective.
The first horror game my wife and I played for our weekly horror night, and the only game I was able to complete before we had to take a break, which led to my resumed hiatus away from all horror titles for another year.
Through the combination of hallucinations, the first person perspective, and the hearing of illusory sounds for remaining in the dark was a brilliant piece of design that left me dysfunctional without my wife reading a walk-through too much.
So let's begin by talking about the umbral brilliance of the sanity system. (But no worries philosophy fans, we will get to the game's portrayal of Agrippa soon enough.)
The player character, his name's Daniel, has an uncontrollable fear of the dark. Wading into dark places harms the player’s mental health, and triggers different kinds of visual and audio distortions which obstruct the player's ability to discern between safety and real threats. Standing in light sources can abate the hallucinations, as well as taking an irresponsible amount of Laudanum to force the depressing effect on their anxious mind.
A future Frictional Games game, SOMA, would be lauded for the genius of tying player health and sanity to the act of witnessing the monsters that lurked within. A system designed for achieving that foundational rule of horror discovered by the movie Alien. That rule being “Don't let the audience see the monster for as long as possible.”
Let the mind wander and conjure up its own fears before the light of knowledge takes away the fear.
However, I believe Amnesia The Dark Descent receives far too little credit for achieving the very same with its monster design. To avoid monsters in Amnesia, I would often have to hide in dark corners to avoid being in their line of sight. But the encroaching fear of the dark baked into the game’s systems kept these moments from being opportunities to catch my breath. Rather, they heightened my sense of panic, as the longer I felt I needed to hide the more I felt like I needed to run past the monster to survive. Placing me constantly between two looming threats: a physical monster who mustn't see me, and a psychological monster which couldn't be seen.
Beyond that, there were also the water monsters which literally couldn't be seen as I tried to platform between floating wooden crates. Showing that Frictional had always been carefully considering how to keep a player from seeing the monster. At the time, that was the most anxiety I had ever felt while playing a game. Every event was a reason to panic, and every rest was distrusted, transformed into a never ending dread.
Even with my wife on the walkthrough, I only ever managed to get through a single level per night due to my own stress becoming too much to handle. At the time, I needed frequent breaks and many days between game sessions to be prepared for trying my hand at the next area.
Of all the games that kicked off the modern trend of youtube-centric horror video games, Amnesia continues to prove that it earned all those high praises.
But, of course, I am also a lover of philosophy. And the presence of one Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, likely the most famous name in occult philosophy as a whole, plays a key role in the story of this game. Which has me wondering, “Exactly how well does Amnesia The Dark Descent engage with the ideas of Agrippa's philosophy?”
Well that is a struggle of its own category. Agrippa's philosophy is one of extreme skepticism. Going so far as to say that the sciences and mathematics of his day had accomplished no degree of knowledge of any kind. Not even in an abstract sense of “What is true knowing?” But a very practical belief that any knowledge of the material world, knowledge that was not a revelation by God through means of ritual, means nothing. Because they do not understand the fundamental, abstract, and magical principles on which the world was made.
Much like a good monster in a horror game, Agrippa uses his writing not to present a coherent, linear argument, but to obfuscate his ideas as much as possible. Putting the reader through their own esoteric practice of deciphering Agrippa's writing to extract a cogent thought delivered through contextless quotes and many references or citations.
Despite the historical representation of Agrippa as a Philosopher of the Occult, it can be important to remember that he was also a historical person. Something of a travelling scholar by necessity, his interest in the topic of natural magic made it difficult for him to maintain favor among Christian high society in the 16th century. Given the limitations of his time, Agrippa was something of a feminist. Writing a treatise titled, “Declamation on the Nobility and Pre-Eminence of the Female Sex” in honor of Margaret of Austria, daughter of Emperor Maximilian, and published the treatise despite losing his position in Margaret's court when his studies of Kabbalah in practices got him accused of being a Judaizing Heretic. (Stanford)
His writings against witch trials earned Agrippa his place among Protestant Reformation scholars and humanists. But continued influences from Pagan philosophy without giving predominance to Roman Catholic Canon haunted all of his writings. So, despite his reputation, there is a case to me made that we only know of Agrippa due to his humanitarian philosophy, and not his magic.
But what he is known for is his magic, and that is the inspiration that Amnesia The Dark Descent wishes to invoke.
Agrippa's system of magical thought had three primary categories:
Natural Magic, which was originally the practice of physics, chemistry, and anything to do with the Earth. Invoking the spirit of the planet to give man Dominion over god's creations. But in the revision of his work On Occult Philosophy Agrippa recharacterized the as a receptacle to the divine/occult spirit, in which the practice of magic tried to return Earth to the Prime Matter which may hold those divine qualities or powers.
Astrological and Numerological Magic, which was anything to do with the celestial bodies. Which could be a source of knowledge or divination, if guided by the literal light of God as interpreted by a Christian mage. Which tells natural magic what is true through the illumination of knowledge by the Platonic Form of The Intellect to the Form of The Mind, which is then exercised by the mage's capacity to exercise Reason. So long as divination is never used to assert a determinative power over God's dominion.
And Religious Magic, which guides the magus, the mage, in proper ritual to avoid the corrupting influence of demons, which, obviously, invade upon the proper practice of magic unless you are invoking the proper names of God in Hebrew. In the revision of On Occult Philosophy, this was further clarified as a post-death judgement on the three part human soul. The Idolum, sense-perception, dissolves back into the earth. The Mens, mind, which is divine, returns to God. Whereas the Ratio, the rational soul, is judged for whether it turned toward god or toward the physical world in life.
Because knowledge is only ever given to man, not created by him, and because sense perception is inherently flawed and prone to error, Agrippa ultimately sees the practices of the sciences to be vain. Self-important for representing the idolum, sense perceptions, which can only interact with the sublunary world, as equal to the forms of cognition which directly connect to God: mens, the mind, and ratio, the rationality. Idolum cannot actually represent the whole truth of divine creation.
Despite defenses to the contrary, I find Agrippa's epistemology to be deeply anti-intellectual, and vitriolic to the point of caricature would someone write as he did today. Pointing to disagreement between fields of science as evidence that the practice of science itself is false, rather than the specific content of hypotheses. Treating neutrality on matters of scripture, of the divine, secret causes of things per revelation, to be a flaw rather than a virtue of science as a practice. Calling Aristotle demonic and Plato angelic. Agrippa may not have thought of himself as being anti-intellectual, but the contents of his writing certainly are. He quite explicitly states his lack of faith in the process of knowledge through dialectic. And in that way I see him as working against philosophy, even among other Christian philosophers.
His ideas of magic and how the Idolum comes to know the physical world could allow for science to have its place describing nature, and theology's place to knowing the divine, but it ultimately demands that science subordinate itself to esoteric revelations before asking questions.
To Agrippa, the living world, and human life as a whole, was a trial created by God to test who was perfected enough to enter heaven. A person must be born with the perfect horoscope equivalent to Jesus, or live a healthy lifestyle to overcome a poor birth. A person must overcome all passion and desire by turning away from the physical world. And a person must then receive divinity through proper Christian ritual. The purpose of life is to live and die properly, and correct theological magic is the means for that to happen.
In Amnesia The Dark Descent, Agrippa is one of the three conspirators that set up this house of torture, such that they could study the magic of an ancient religion through the artifacts of three mysterious orbs. By which they sought to create Vitae, concentrated human spirit, to extend their own lives, and empower them to access the realm of the divine through a magic portal.
If I'm being charitable, the Orbs in the game could be seen as the Prime Matter found in Agrippa natural philosophy. Perfected vessels for astrological or divine spirit to enter and be used by humans. And funny enough extracting Vitae, life essence, is an aspect of his first draft of On Occult Philosophy, but found in his Astrological Magic, not his Natural Magic. No such process of extracting vitae from subjects made to experience great levels of fear. And, if we want to take this further, even the final choice at the end to both understand and achieve saving Agrippa's soul could be paralleled to the real Agrippa's description of divine judgement after death. An esoteric and confusing puzzle serving as the ultimate judge of the player's morality.
What is perhaps most frightening part of Amnesia is the ignorance. Being stuck in an uncanny, liminal space where things feel at the same time familiar and yet behave in strange and baffling ways. The understanding that, without a miracle, you could never hope to bridge the gap between what you know and what can be expressed. Being left only with trials, yet no room for error.
To be witness to monsters only to realize you became one yourself. That is how a passing interest in both science and magic, Becomes Horror.
Thank you for watching,
Take care of yourselves,
And stay true.