Thanatos Axe Thrashes Through This Judgement Run | Hades 2

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11 thoughts on “Thanatos Axe Thrashes Through This Judgement Run | Hades 2”

  6. This run was like everything wrong with the last patch in a single vid. Oceanus reward nerfs and Echo boon nerfs both rearing their ugly heads and both very nearly bricked the run.

    Trivia: Despite being associated with witchcraft, Tarot cards in the style of the Arcana Cards are actually from the early Renaissance period of Italy, and therefore have nothing to do with Ancient Greece and its mythology. Bit of a weird choice from the devs but I gotta admit the system itself is quite cool and more interactive than the Mirror of Night was. Tarot cards were originally added to decks as a 'trump card' system to expand upon existing suites in the Italian deck, similar to the Jester card still included in regular playing packs that are important to certain card games.

    The very first Tarot cards were introduced in 1440 as allegorical scenarios related to divinity and the Christian lifecycle (ironic considering the game's later ties to witchcraft and demonology). Even this early on cards were associated with gambling, and thus, sin, so perhaps the early allegorical versions were made as an attempt to appease the church about their evil nature. The first confirmed deck with the original 21 cards comes from Milan and was used by its dukes during card games, although variations have existed since at least 1418 with different trump cards with different effects and depictions. Because the tarot cards were originally hand-painted, at first their spread was slow and variance between decks was high. However, the invention of the printing press and the many wars Italy was embroiled in at the time meant that mass-produced versions of the Milan decks soon spread to Switzerland and France, and from there, to the rest of the world.

    To this day in Italy and other non-English European countries tarot cards are used for playing as much as they are for divination and the occult. In fact, several variations of the deck's ordering existed in Italy (especially in its South, away from the mass-produced variation's dominance) lasted for hundreds of years, with one version where The World was stronger than The Angel lasting up until only a hundred and fifty years ago. Here in the Anglosphere, though, playing cards with trumps never took off to nearly the same extent as in continental Europe, so tarots were seen as an exotic curiosity focused mainly on magic.

    The occultist use of the deck is actually extremely recent, dating to 1780s France. Back then there was a rumor going around that the Arcana dated back to Ancient Egyptian times, so the decks produced were themed after Egypt's Book of Thoth, God of Knowledge, Justice and Wisdom. Occultists tried to tie the interpretation of the symbols of the deck as a practice to the initiation rituals for goddesses like Isis, Demeter and Persephone (the connection to Mel appears!). In these rituals, bright flashing lights and other intense sensory shocks induced a state of confusion in the participant, until they were grounded in clearly presented symbols that allowed their then-disoriented senses to focus on one thing and one thing only (in Demeter's case it was often a sheaf of wheat, a symbol of her fertility). The French occultists tied the reading of the cards to this revelation of divine symbols and how it was tied to a person's timeline and life history. It wasn't until 1783 (less than two hundred and fifty years ago) that the first 'manual' on 'how' to read the Tarot deck was published. Several occultists all claimed to be the first to do this at once, but none of them were so important as Eliphas Levi. He reinforced the (bogus) claims the Tarot came down from the ancients, but rather than calling it a component of the Book of Thoth he called it a derivative of the Book of Hermes (a thing he just straight-up made up). According to Levi, a person could use the Tarot cards not just to tell their personal fortune but unlock all secrets of the universe as divinely revealed to the reader, and it's this interpretation that has remained the most popular in occult circles ever since.

    Just like the occultists' connection to Ancient Greece/Egypt is largely made up and bogus, a lot of the Hades II tarot deck is itself made up and bogus. Some of the Hades II Arcana cards have direct counterparts to the real Arcana, such as The Lovers, Death and The Moon. Others have corresponding counterparts in the deck (just like tarot symbology has corresponding relations to Greek mystery rituals) that are nonetheless not quite the same thing (like how using the symbols to inform your future choices are not quite the same as using the symbols to ground people in a world of chaos), such as The Magician and The Sorceress being easy parallels and The Queen being akin to The Empress (or a Queen card from the regular playing deck, which is sometimes mixed with Tarot cards). Others, like The Centaur, The Titan, The Champions and The Artificer are entirely made up for the game's sake and merely sound like real cards (just like how tarot's connection to ancient religions used fake terms and ideas similar to real principles in Greek religion to seem more official). Often, the games' cards allude to its own lore instead, with The Champions being a reference to how Asterios and Theseus can use Divine Favour in the first game to power a Call like your own and the Lovers being a reference to how Eurydice's keepsake gave the same three shields against a boss enemy, and how she and Orpheus are the most famous lovers in Greek myth.

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