Note: This Article contains Spoilers for Final Fantasy XIV: Shadow Bringers expansion. 

It seems like you can’t read anything in the occult world these days without coming across terms like ‘white witch’ referring to someone eschewing all baneful magic or ‘black magic’ referring to nastier spellwork. And, no, I am not going to go into the origins of these terms. I think we’re all smart enough to make the connection to the internalized racism / white supremacy here. Instead, I’m going to go through a concept of Light and Dark within magic that I’ve been taught that has nothing to do with race, or skin color. 

Suffuse with Light

The trope of heroes within Final Fantasy games is the ‘Warrior of Light.’ And, for a long time, that was the idea of a hero—a representative of the positive force of ‘Light’ whereas Demon Kings and monsters were forces of ‘Darkness.’ The Shadowbringers expansion tossed this onto its head. The player comes to a world that is covered in light—at all times. There is no darkness, and there is no night. 

Within the lore of this setting, there are 6 major elements and then Light and Darkness. An unbalance in any direction is disastrous, and can actually destroy the world. In the world of Shadowbringers, this very nearly happened. Light washed across the world like a tidal wave, destroying everything in its path with the force of a space laser. The player character is hailed as a hero—The Shadow Bringer who helps restore the world to its rightful balance. People fall to their knees and weep with joy when they see the night sky. 

Wind, Fire, and Ice are most associated with the Astral–or Light. Ice is the most ‘prone’ to getting stuck and becoming unmoving. Lighting, Water, and Earth are associated with the Umbral–or Dark. Lightning is the most unstable, and most prone to change.

And the monsters that represent Light? Terrifying. They look more like sculptures than living creatures. It also turns out Light is infectious. If someone is wounded by a Sin Eater, they themselves can begin the slow transformation into a Sin Eater themselves. The end stage of this includes the victim’s skin thickening and their expression being stuck in place. 

Aspects of Light

Removing cultural contexts of Light, and what do we have? You can ‘bring something into the light’ by making it visible. With light, you can observe and examine. This is sometimes referred to as ‘defining’ or ‘limiting’. It sets up the rules and settles something into a very firm existence. But, not everything is easily explained by being with scientific scrutiny. This is echoed in Shadowbringers in how the Sin Eaters and their victims look more like statues than living creatures. They are, in many ways, perfect. But, they don’t change. Light, like a laser, can also burn. 

Light falls into the world of very mundane, observable things that are well-defined and very well understood. There is nothing predictable in the Light—but that doesn’t make it ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ It’s just something that can be seen and ‘understood’ by anyone. What do we understand well? Political corruption. Viruses. Factories. One of the reasons that I loved Shadowbringers so much was that it turned the idea of Light = Goodness on its ass.

Aspects of Darkness

One of the most disconcerting facets of Darkness is the infinite possibility of what is contained within. There could literally be anything in the darkness. And that is Light’s opposite. Nothing is defined. We don’t get to peek behind the curtain or see how the sausage gets made. It’s primeval and vague, always changing and we are never quite sure what lays within. 

But, that is what makes it beautiful. It’s an endless potential. Endless possibility. And in a world where the light always bears down, a dark sky can provide some cool relief to the harsh heat of the sun. Darkness is thus obfuscation, and the potential for change. It is the ‘Mysteries’ that are discussed in the occult sphere. It’s the shit that you can’t really clock until you experience, and even then they are hard to describe or explain to others. Like Light, this doesn’t make it good or bad. It just is. 

Sometimes Darkness is healing, and we can’t be considered human without it. I like to hope that within me, there is a lot. One of my teachers says that a weakness of mine is that I want to drag everything into the Light and look at it through a microscope. Hopefully, I’ll learn to let that go.