Mastered by the Pthumerians and lost to their progeny, the Eldritch Truth was rediscovered by the scholars of Byrgenworth College. Initial encounters with this Truth drove men like Dores and Muller insane. It led to the establishment of the Choir, and its study led to powerful arcane tools that reach to the cosmos and beyond.
The pursuit and mastery of this Truth are some of the primary motives of nearly all factions in Bloodborne. From the ancient Pthumerians to the Choir, and even the Great Ones themselves.
The purpose of this essay is to propose the meaning of this Eldritch Truth. It asserts that this Truth is the knowledge of spatial dimensions beyond the three which humanity is familiar with. To understand this concept, it explores Carl Sagan’s Flatland analogy. This analogy explains the complexities of interacting with dimensions beyond human perception. This analogy is retold as an allegory to relate these concepts to the lore of Bloodborne. It then reviews examples of how the interactions of additional spatial dimensions are presented in Bloodborne.
The Allegory of Flatland
In 1980 astrophysicist Carl Sagan shared the story of Flatland on the television series “Cosmos.” This analogy explains how a two-dimensional being would perceive a three-dimensional encounter. Sagan later uses this analogy to describe how a three-dimensional being would perceive a fourth dimension.
Flatland is a two-dimensional world in which everything is flat, including the inhabitants that live there. As two-dimensional beings, the Flatlanders have width and depth, but no height. They can be best imagined as simple shapes, like circles, squares, and triangles. Because they are two-dimensional, Flatlanders can move forward and backward, left and right. But they cannot move up or down. These are directions related to a dimension they cannot physically perceive and have no concept of.
Above Flatland, an apple-shaped three-dimensional being has taken interest in the Flatlanders. Because Flatlanders can’t perceive “up”, they have no idea of the apple’s presence. When Flatlanders want privacy, they put shapes between themselves to block one another’s view. But without any notion of “up,” they have no means to put anything in that direction to obstruct the apple’s view. This enables the apple can see everything in Flatland.
The apple takes a special interest in one of the Flatlanders, a square, and decides to make conact. The apple decides to reach out vocally at first – unsure of how the square might react to seeing it. The apple says “Hello.”
Incapable of hearing in three dimensions, it would not know where the sound came from. Did it come from all directions at once? Or perhaps it came from inside the square itself. The square decides it must be hearing things, and secretly begins to question its sanity.
Perceiving the square’s confusion, the apple decides to make itself visible, which only makes matters worse. The apple descends into Flatland. However, because it is three-dimensional only a cross-section of the apple fits in Flatland at a time. Because the square is two-dimensional, it can only see one side of this cross-section, not the whole thing. Any fluctuation in the square’s movement will result in a different part of it intersecting Flatland. This results in the square seeing this extra-dimensional being as an undulating, pulsating, shapeless form appearing out of thin air. The square is gripped with terror by the unfathomable shape before it.
This is not what the apple had intended. In a panic, the apple feels compelled to help the square understand. Not quite considering the ramifications, the apple wisps the square up into the third dimension, the heavens above Flatland. To the square, this experience is a great and terrible revelation. Everything in Flatland is suddenly before the square’s eyes. looking at its house it can see the inside and the outside at the same time. It sees its friends and neighbors take on forms it has never seen before. Normally the square can only see one side of its friends at a time. Now it can see all sides of them at once. It can even see sides of them it has never seen before: their insides!
When the square re-enters Flatland’s two-dimensional plane, it appears to those in the vicinity as if he materialized out of thin air. The Flatlanders around him gather around in awe. “How did you do that?” they ask, “Where have you been?”
How does the square answer? Nobody in Flatland has ever entered – much less perceived – this third dimension. Since Flatlanders have no concept of “up,” and are vested with only two-dimensional capacities, the square has no way to point to where it has been.
The purpose of Sagan’s analogy is scientific rather than philosophical. As a result, he doesn’t spend much time exploring the aftermath of the square’s encounter. How would it try to explain what it experienced?
Perhaps it might try to explain the third dimension in terms familiar with two-dimensional beings. Without the concept of up, there would be no concept of a “higher plane”. But perhaps the two-dimensional equivalent would be to call it a perpendicular plane.
While Flatland might be finite in size, it would exist on an infinite two-dimensional plane. Flatlander scientists would push the boundaries of science to explore this uninhabited cosmos. The square may choose to explain what it experienced in terms of this unknown infinite space.
If the square chose any of these approaches, it would not be entirely wrong. However, none of these approaches fully explain what it experienced. In truth, the experience was beyond the Flatlander’s understanding of reality. Perhaps the square chooses to relate it to a dream… or even a nightmare.
In addition to not exploring how the square might explain its encounter, Sagan also doesn’t delve into how the Flatlanders react.
Some Flatlanders write off the square as being mad. They find its explanations of seeing their insides disturbing. How can one see everything at once? Why can it not explain what happened to it in simple terms? Unable to comprehend – and unwilling to admit that they can’t comprehend – they write the square off as insane.
Others dismiss him as a prankster or a charlatan. What proof can he provide of this experience? Can he reproduce it? Without evidence, some Flatlanders will dismiss the experience as fiction. They chalk up the statements of the witnesses as hysteria and continue with their two-dimensional lives.
The Flatlanders that saw the square materialize for themselves will find it hard to understand what they witnessed. Those who cannot think of a better explanation will rationalize what they saw the only way they know how: with religion. They praise the square as a Holy Shape chosen by The Great Apple. They form a religion to worship the unseen beings around them. They define a theology that explains The Great Apple’s interest in Flatlanders. They begin worshiping The Great Apple’s undulating form. They define rules for how a Flatlander might someday enter the presence of these beings, or even become like them.
The Sky and the Cosmos are One
This is the experience of those in Bloodborne who have encountered the Eldritch Truth: eyes on the inside, beings that exist beyond reality, and events that either enhance the mind or lead it to madness. In fact “Truth oft resembles madness, inaccessible to the dull of mind” (Madman Set). The similarity between these stories exists because they are about the same experience. Both the Flatlanders and those who encountered the Eldritch Truth learned that reality is more than what they can naturally perceive. They both discovered that what they know is only a subset of reality. A reality with which they cannot fully interact with.
Worse still – some beings can inhabit these in-perceivable dimensions. Are these beings sentient? Are they compassionate? Regardless of the answer, these beings can affect reality with the same ease and intent as one who drops a book on an ant.
This was not completely understood by Byrgenwerth. It wasn’t until later that the Choir began to understand the meaning of this Truth. Kin Coldblood states that the Byrgenworth scholars only “touched upon” it. This likely occurred through the Augur of Ebrietas. This hunter tool is a “Remnant of the Eldritch Truth encountered at Byrgenwerth.” It instructs hunters to “use phantasms, the invertebrates known to be the augurs of the Great Ones, to partially summon abandoned Ebrietas.”
When using this tool the caster extends their arm, apparently holding a phantasm. It’s unclear why this organism attracts Ebrietas. Perhaps it is something like a cherished pet. Or maybe it makes for a tasty snack. Regardless, a portal appears in the caster’s hand and eager tentacles reach through. If anybody is unfortunate enough to be standing in front of the portal, the tentacles will not grasp them. Ebrietas only grabs her prize, and knockes back anything that gets in her way.
The Augur describes this phenomenon as a partial summon. On the other side of the portal stands the full horror of Ebrietas. Her tentacles would not be visible to someone standing near her, as they could be somewhere else, through the wormhole in front of her.
From a certain perspective, it would appear that Ebrietas is split into two parts. But in reality, Ebrietas is still whole within four-dimensional space. Similar to the way a coin can be touching two locations on a folded map, Ebrietas can fold three-dimensional space across a fourth dimension.
The Augur of Ebrietas is not unique in describing this ability to fold space. A Call Beyond states that “Long ago, the Healing Church used phantasms to reach a lofty plane of darkness, but failed to make contact with the outer reaches of the cosmos. The rite failed to achieve its intended purpose, but instead, create a small exploding star.”
This demonstrates that early Church scholars recognized phantasms’ ability to reach across space. Much like the square in Flatland, they perceived the realm of the Great Ones as being something far away, in or beyond the cosmos. Thus they used the phantasms to reach this “lofty plane of darkness.” They performed “rites” on helpless phantasms, forcing them to fold space to grant the clerics access to the Great Ones. In truth, they were unaware that the very dimension they were trying to reach was the space they were inadvertently bypassing.
The resulting explosion from A Call Beyond is unlikely to be an actual star. It is more likely to be the release of energy caused by a distressed creature fleeing into another dimension. The Church scholars – having caught glimpses of the cosmos through this rite and in Isz – could be forgiven for interpreting this burst to be an exploding star.
Similarly, the description of the Blacksky Eye states that “Deep within the eye lies a vast stretch of dark sky that rumbles with an endless meteor storm”. The pupil of the Blacksky Eye is a portal – a fold across three-dimensional space – to a perpetual meteor storm in the cosmos. Rubbing the eye pulls one of these meteors through the eye’s pupil. This is not unlike the abilities of Rom or the Living Failures, who fold space in a similar way. A wormhole opens in the sky through which one can see the cosmos, and hunters bombarded by meteors.
Perhaps it was this very eye that inspired the Cosmic Eye Watcher Badge and the epiphany associated with it. The Augur of Ebrietas and the phantasm tortured in the A Call Beyond rite would result in only quick glimpses of these folds across a higher plane. However, the Blacksky Eye would provide a portal from a fold that was ever in effect. A Choir member could look through this portal and perceive the great space beyond. While not the first to witness this phenomenon, it was the Choir who began to understand the inter-dimensional meaning behind it. “Here we stand, feet planted in the earth, but might the cosmos be very near us, only just above our heads?” Behold, “The sky and the cosmos are one.”
Through this cryptic statement – unwittingly shared by many a hunter across the planes of reality – the Choir explains the Eldritch Truth. Just as Flatland is a two-dimensional plane that exists in three-dimensions, so too does their reality exist as a subset of all other spatial dimensions. The realm of the Great Ones is not above the sky. It’s not in some unreachable plane beyond the cosmos. It’s all around them, inside of them, and everywhere between. It’s not a realm that they travel to, it is the reality in which they already exist. A reality which they could reach out and touch, if only they could move a fraction of an inch in the right inconceivable direction.
This definition of the Eldritch Truth is a fundamental concept for the Lore Hunt essays. The Eldritch Truth is the knowledge that there are more than three spatial dimensions. It is the knowledge that the Great Ones can traverse these dimensions and manipulate objects within them. The Flatland Allegory will be a reference point which we will refer to frequently as we continue to explore the world of Bloodborne.
“Our eyes are yet to open.”