【REVERSE: 1999】The Prisoner In The Cave V1.4 - Blind Playthrough // Reaction Day 2

[@rebe_eka]

When 37 told Regulus that she's the second irrational number who has rejected the truth, she's basically implying that Sophia is an irrational number right? It's interesting as irrational numbers aren't welcomed on the island

[@TeHie38]

For VOD gang the first 4 hours is clearing Limbo 3:58:05 Story continuation

[@randolfhein7985]

The geometrical shape or the things they called 'essences' left from the arcanists affected by the storm is what I believe to be called 'Platonic solids', the shapes of the the original elements of the world. There are 5 of them. So the Storm or the 'emanation' are turning them, or to be precise, leaving their original 'essences' (some are partial) in the aftermath. "The Platonic solids are prominent in the philosophy of Plato. Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c. 360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarked, "...the god used [it] for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aither (aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element. "(the Philosopher stone is also known as the 5th element, which we could already correlate to what Regulus seem to be aiming to create, as strongly hinted in this chapter.)" Remember the crazy patient in chapter 3 in that one Matilda scene muttering those shapes? Also, the shape of the object where they do the oath by the entrance of the hall of truth is in the shape of dodecahedron, the quintessence and the 5th element known as aether. If you go to the gallery and check the pictures showing that object (both day time and the night time version), you will see that the flavor text of the cg is even hinting at it. Explaining the important aspect of the Apeiron group's view about the emanation being the sole freedom from the world of matters into the truth is pretty much related to the belief of Gnosticism and Hermeticism, and not just Pythagoreanism. (well technically they're all related because the former borrowed some aspects from the Chaldean Oracles and Plato's Anima Mundi or World-soul explained in Timaeus. While the latter, Plato was influenced by the Pythagorean.) But going back to the belief that the world of matters is deemed as being evil or incomplete or by 37's explanation, the world of matters being the realm where creating a 'perfect circle is impossible', is I believe derives from the Gnostic belief that the 'material' world is created by the Demiurge. (Plato's Timaeus was initially where the Demiurge was introduced as the 'craftsman' of the world of matters and not yet called the Demiurge and not framed as the malicious being as the Gnostic texts viewed him to be later on.) "The demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One" (The monad or the supreme being). In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being, with his creation initially having the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. In other systems, the Demiurge is instead portrayed as "merely" incompetent or foolish: his creation is an unconscious attempt to replicate the divine world (the pleroma, which is the heaven where the Apeiron group is certain the emanation will take them.) based on faint recollections, and thus ends up fundamentally flawed. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge is a proposed solution to the problem of evil: while the divine beings are omniscient and omnibenevolent, the Demiurge who rules over our own physical world is not. The demiurge is given many names in the Gnostic scriptures, but the three most common ones are Yaldabaoth (also spelled “Ialdabaoth”), Samael, and Saklas. “Saklas” comes from the Aramaic word for “fool,” and “Samael” is Aramaic for “Blind God” or “God of the Blind.” (the design of the Manus Vindictae's mask and how it blinds the believers wearing it is pretty much a giveaway imo.) If you wanna know more about how the Demiurge was created in Gnosticism, then I recommend reading first about the 'Myth of Sophia'. Which I personally believe to be Arcana, the one who created the Demiurge using the stolen 'Divine spark' (or the Pneuma) of God. "I find pleasure in this Allegory of the cave. However, hast this been unto thee ... that who led us to the exile in this cave?" These were the last words of Arcana in this chapter and it personally gave me goosebumps. If you've ever read the Mythos of 'Sophia Achamoth' then you'll learn that through Sophia's exile from the heaven/Pleroma because of her creation of the Demiurge that the world of matters, the 'cave' was created to begin with. But I still have personal doubts about the storm if it's actually caused by the 'Monad' as the Apeiron group believed or is actually the work of the Demiurge. There's more to be said regarding the Abraxas connection with Gnosticism, the name Urd which is the name of one of the three fates who spins the spindle of Necessity, the thread of time in the version of Norse mythology(almost like how we spin the wheel of thread in the gacha), the island being cut-off from the river of time or the material realm (well not anymore after that ending), Sofia and her family being 'Corrector', an ancient profession about 'fixing' the 'threads of time' as hinted by the narrator, etc. Either way, this chapter was amazing to me and it's quite sad how many people who've finished it to be missing out on these incredible allusions. "If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing." - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (regarding Theory of Omission from the writer of 'In Our Time', which is also the title of the first chapter of the game.) p.s (I already shared this thought somewhere but might as well share it here as well.)

[@TeHie38]

Regarding Arcana's final words to 6 : it is you who exiled us in this cave or sth along the lines. What I think is that Arcana blamed the people on the island that create the Storm while conceal everything about it maybe. The Storm is the truth in this case. Anyone's thoughts on this?

[@Lynxx52]

I think she was saying don't forget the reason you were exiled to this island (referring to humans) and that's why it's followed by the human army attacking the island

[@Unresolvedissues101]

Yes yes you are