Final Fantasy seven heralded by millions today as one of the greatest video games ever made
There is just no describing how potent this game is. No way to truly express the sheer impact
It's had on the landscape of video games and culture and how this game
Single-handedly transformed the art of storytelling and gaming forever
This video is intended to be an exploration of the hidden spirituality within Final Fantasy 7
But to make it accessible for people who might not have heard of it
Allow me to provide an incredibly brief overview of the plot fair warning. This will basically spoil everything
The game begins as a humble story of an ex soldier named Cloud Strife whose
Disposition towards the world gets him a job as a mercenary running a bombing run of a large reactor within a giant city
Which is literally draining the planets lifeforce energy
The city is owned and operated by the Shinra corporation
Using the energy to fuel the city make bank and support the evil Corp autocracy in generally ruling the world
Cloud doesn't really care about any of that stuff though. He just wants to get paid
Joining cloud and his adventures at first are Barret
The gun armed leader of the rebel faction called Avalanche trying to destroy Shinra clouds old friend T fuh
Who just kicks ass and Aerith a mysterious yet?
Beautiful flower girl who is later revealed to be the last living descendant of an ancient race of super spiritual humans called the cetera over
The course of the game fighting the corporate Icarus II it is revealed that there is a deeper more significant evil in the world
It began a long time ago when a meteor crashed into the planet, which had a parasitic life-form on it called Genova
Which was responsible for wiping out the ancient cetera later in time
Jenova was captured by the corporate Icarus II and they did bio experiments with it and created a half human half
Genova clone being named Sephiroth
along the journey
we meet red 13 a talking wolf with the Charmander tail who introduces us to his grandfather a
Floating wise man who reveals to us that the entire planet whose name is Gaia is a giant living organism that she its energy
freely with the life-forms on the planet
He explains that we're all intimately connected with each other and that when we die our soul energy returns to the planet and becomes one
With the energy called the life stream
Whereby after which we can return again in another body and live out more
Lifetimes as the great energy naturally flows through us to do so
meanwhile, we also discover that Sephiroth over his life has come to awaken the Genova DNA within him and
Recognizes himself as Juno his child and fuels this evil Jesus complex within him
He sets out on a mission to use magic to summon another meteor to crash into the planet
Which will release a massive amount of life stream energy then to be absorbed by Genova and fused Genoa's consciousness with the planet
so the goal of the villain of ff7 is basically to become the villain from guardians of the galaxy to
Genova would become a planet and then can create anything that it wishes
master of the evil reality matrix
Part of the journey to make this happen involves going into this ancient pyramid with a mind bending reality
Labyrinth inside and we'll talk more about this later
As mentioned we also learn of the cetera the ancient super spiritual civilization
That once thrived on the planet and who had the ability to communicate with the planet itself
but of all but disappeared leaving behind only a few remnants of its civilization and
arif a mystical girl with magical healing powers, who is
Instrumental in saving the day at the end through the power of prayer and a deep intimate connection with nature and the holy spirit
No joke
There are legends of the ancient
Cetra homeland called the promised land a place where the lifestream energy flow is like milk and honey
And this fuels the plot because the Shinra corporation
Are looking for it so that they can extract more energy because their other wells are drying up
At one point in what is perhaps one of the most legendary turning points in a video game ever?
Aerith leaves the party and goes to the Forgotten City a
Particularly magical city of the ancient cetera where she is found in deep mystic prayer
Moments later Sephiroth descends from above and kills her creating a huge turning point for the game and the emotional well-being of the characters
Cloud two goes on a journey of self-discovery through this game as he first discovers that he is not even himself
But that his memories were a clone of another soldier named Zach who had black hair and a really big sword
But through the reconciliation of this inner paradox of Who am I?
It helps him to realize who he truly is and ultimately leads him to courageously confront Sephiroth at the end of the game
The game ends with the colossal meteor that Sephiroth has summoned coming to smash the planet
But thanks to aerith's sacred prayer just before she died
she was able to summon the lifestream to awaken to the threat and
Stop the giant space rock from smashing into the planet and of course cloud and his friends beat Sephiroth
after the credits
We see the world many many years later and find that new life has taken over the old Shinra city and is now covered in
moss and plant life
So off the bat, let me just ask. Did you notice any hidden spirituality in this game?
Literally every aspect of this story. We could probably go deeper into the Shinra corporation
personifies the current economic and business systems of the world
Draining the planet of her life force through the extraction of her natural resources with reckless abandon
We see references to an ancient civilization that thrived in connection with the planet today in our world
We see scientists and historians are now beginning to acknowledge sites
Like gobekli tepe and that there must have been some ancient civilization of some kind on this planet over 13,000 years ago
We even see a deep psychological reference to exploring our true nature with the spirit of the planet when cloud falls into the lifestream
But yet with a game like ff7
The real hidden spirituality goes way deeper through its unique reflection of Kabbalistic wisdom
Just as a side note
If this next bit doesn't make total sense go and check out our spirit science tree of life series afterwards and then come back
It'll blow your mind a thousand times more
The first clue we see to this is through the name of the main villain Sephiroth in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life
Each sphere is called a Cepheid oat the exact same spelling and everything
We see further connections to the Tree of Life with the characters Erath
Barrett and Tifa some of the initial characters we meet in the game
Aerith connects professor which stands for the archetypes of love grace and benevolence
Barrett opposes her with Guevara the force of power and purposeful destruction in order to refine the creative process
It makes sense because he's the one who organizes the bombing Iran on the reactors that are draining the life stream for profits
Then we have Tifa whose name relates with credit and stands for the harmony and goodness of the spirit of humanity
This is only scratching the surface though because it seems nearly everyone has some sort of spiritual or religious reference
Even Hojo the evil scientist who basically created evil. Jesus has a mutated form later called
hella Tech Hojo a Miss romanization of
Heretic Hojo referring to heresy a concept in many religions about going against the norm of their belief system
But on top of this ff7 goes even deeper
You see there is an idea that comes from ancient Gnosticism and Kabbalistic lore about the creation of the universe
essentially, it's the idea that the supreme oneness created this first layer of creation a dimension called an a on which had supreme knowing and
Understanding from the wisdom of the Godhead creation then extended further creating more dimensional ions
But which had less knowing and connection to the supreme source
Eventually an ion was created that was entirely disconnected from even knowing that there was anything higher which the Gnostic called the Demiurge
It thought that it was the supreme all-powerful benevolence
And this Demiurge was what created the universe and inhabited it with all of life
However, the powers that it used were still from the supreme oneness
And so the seeds of benevolence and goodness were hidden within the created life on the planet
Now Final Fantasy 7 demonstrates this story in several ways
the first is that it describes how some people can choose a life of goodness and striving and
Others walk a path of evil and corruption
it also shows that sometimes pain and conflict are thrust upon us and we must transmute and
Transform the energy within us if we are to become who we are born to be
This is why clouds last name is strife. It is through his strife that he both finds himself and saves the world
but the true hidden spirituality here is this
Regarding the story of the Demiurge. We actually see it told through Genova the name here
Genova is not at all dissimilar from the jewish. Jehovah their name for god fused with the greek
Nova, meaning new' essentially giving Genova a name. That means new god
Final Fantasy 7 here uses this name as a commentary on the way that God was described in the Old Testament
It said that God is a jealous God with a number of other very humanly qualities
The game here presents the idea of the false god the Demiurge
pretending to be the supreme oneness
Which it cannot be this goes further with the relationship to Sephiroth giving us an idea of a sort of evil Jesus figure
He is for all intents and purposes the Son of God and the Word of God made manifest in a human body and performs
Well, you know evil miracles
For example where Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead
Sephiroth killed Aerith so hard that no amount of Phoenix downs could ever bring her back to life
I'm sorry. I need a sec. It's just so sad
But by the way cloud, how is it you're standing here when this shot plays immediately after I mean where your feet broke?
anyways, here's a few other cool things the game features the use of magic through crystals called materia and materia is both Spanish and
Latin for matter and
Material there are seven types of materia which sort of correspond to the chakras
But it's more likely that they were designed based on the five elements and then the forces of good and evil beyond the elements
The red materia used for summons is notably interesting
Summons are spells cast in battle that allow you to draw upon some deity to come and assist you in some way
But what's amazing is that almost every single summon is based on a mythological God in history
And then there's the one for the giant chickens. I
Won't go through all of them, but here's a few key ones
There is Shiva and Rama relating to the Hindu gods of the same name
We have afferent from Islamic mythology Odin from the Norse mythology
we have Hades from Greek mythology and
Knights of the round who is by and far the most powerful summon and is literally King Arthur and his twelve nights
Coming to your rescue and kicking some ass
In addition to the main five materia that are usable by the player
There are also two more types white and black materia
The black materia is the force of chaos for destroying anything and everything you want in the game
It's used to summon meteor to smash into the planet
The white material is called holy a force of divine sacred benevolence, which can be used to cleanse the planet of threats
I guess I should mention there's also huge materia
Which is kind of like giant chunks of unrefined crystal matter now earlier in this video
I mentioned that there was this ancient
pyramid
You might remember in the spirit science human history movie we talked about how there's this story about the true
Capstone of the Great Pyramid in Egypt being sealed away somewhere deep underground
Beneath the pyramid itself in a secret chamber and that the little capstone is a perfect image of the great pyramid made of solid gold
with little passageways and everything
This idea was encoded into ff7 because when you make it to the end of the labyrinth inside of the pyramid
You enter into the secret chamber and literally find a tiny version of the whole pyramid that you're standing inside
What's more amazing?
Is that as your character goes to take it the great pyramid around you begins to shake and tremble?
If you remove it, you get the MacGuffin, but the pyramid will collapse upon you Ono's
Anyway, one of the most valuable aspects of the game is that it not only loads us up on hidden spiritual symbolism
But it grabs us emotionally, too
Which is why the game has weaved such tight emotional memories with nearly everyone who's ever played it
We see all of the characters get very existential throughout the game dealing with death in their own ways dealing with isolation pain
loss sadness and struggle against their seemingly inevitable demise and
Remember all of these characters exist within us as we play
And so as you progress throughout the game you are put in the driver's seat of experi seeing those emotional states yourself
You become the characters and the struggle is real within you and you grow and evolve with them
Many people who began playing ff7 might have connected with cloud not really caring about the world or that the planet is dying
And whatever, you know
but by the end you see the bigger picture you see the necessity for changing the world and maybe just maybe
You embody your own inner team avalanche your own inner cloud
Tifa Barret Aerith or red 13 and set out on a quest to save the world
But maybe just don't blow up anything. I'm certain we can find a better way to move humanity forward
Anyway, Final Fantasy 7 and will stand forever in the hearts and minds of millions around the world as a testament to gaming and storytelling
And for those who are able to see deeper into the fabric of the reality matrix
It stands as an encoded language of ancient mysticism that speaks to the human soul about the nature of life
Love and our connection to the world
The game asks us if we're willing to stand for what we believe in are we willing to go inside ourselves and do the inner?
Work to discover who we really are
Are we willing to look deeper past the surface level of a story any story and find the hidden spirituality?
Thank you again so much for watching
I'd like to give some mad props to the writers at Final Fantasy fandom com along with Peter from kotaku
Whose notes and articles provided some excellent support in making this episode
You'll find links in the comments to check out their writings and of course to everyone watching
enjoy the Final Fantasy 7 remake