Talk:Teams/@comment-35434444-20190115204945

I wonder if anyone has ever compared the four-fold names of each team to the tetragrammaton YHWH; the name of god?

Kabbalistic thought interpreted Adam as the original human being ("he" was actually a hermaphrodite and the production of Eve represents the expansion of consciousness as it became aware of the distinction between the sexes) who was fashioned out of dust gathered from the four regions of the Earth; red, white, black, and... green. (So close!)

He served as the intermediary between Ein Sof and the ten sephirot; the tree of life.

Ein Sof represents the divine light of consciousness, the sephirot is a depiction of the universe, and so Adam could be thought of as the soul -- the aura.

In this primordial state, Adam was a god in his own right similar to the gnostic notion that man partakes of the nature of God, collectivly forms his brother and is in charge of finishing creation.

But of course, like how the gods departed from Remnant and the divine connection was severed, Adam fell. This created the impression in the minds of mystical thinkers across the Chrsistian tradition that a second Adam idential with the first will be remade: Paradise found. And that this end product is where all human development is ultimately leading.

What I'm getting at is that RWBY is a symbol of this reintergration of the opposites that will bring about mankind's redemption. This isn't surprising in of it'self since they're the protagonists, but it goes to show that perhaps there's more behind this than meets the eye. I'm not suggesting that Miles and Kerry have been pouring over archaic literature (although having said that, anime and manga draw heavily from alchemy, Kabbalism, and Jungian thinking.) They don't need to. The symbols they are using are fundemental underpinings of the human psyche; ideas that recur in all places and all times.

The theme of Ruby isn't about "beating Salem," but reuniting her with her opposite. Salem is like the Adam of Remnant. Her name means "complete" which makes her synonymous with Adam as a symbol of totality.

It's the same story, but cetain features are inverted, as if to demonstrate the unity of the opposites in anticipation of thier final reconciliation. The post fall Adam is male. Salem is female. The garden of Eden was a peaceful zone of ecstasy. Salem's tower was a prison. Satan's influence was seen as corrosive. Salem beileved Ozma was her liberation.

Curiously, the whole thing meets the same end.

The force that effects this transformation is Ruby who stands for the spirit Mercurius. The divine connection was never truly severed. It was hidden betwit and between in the gulf juxtaposing consciousness and unconsiousness. She is the post-fall mediary between the human and the divine through her eyes.

Anyway, the contents of this comment were so far-reaching that I didn't quite know where to post it, so I figured here was as good as anywhere since the name occured to me first.