Silent Hill: Classic religion within the horrifying cult

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll talk about the religion in the Silent Hill series, specifically The Order and it's interesting hybrid religion.

The seal of The Order. From The Silent Hill Wiki

For those somewhat unfamiliar with Silent Hill, it is a series of psychological horror games that focuses around the strange going-ons in the town of Silent Hill, occasionally going to the surrounding area as in SH4 and SH:Homecoming. We'll be discussing broad things across most of the games, so I'm going to put up a nice big Spoiler Warning here and now, so read the blog post at your own risk. This will be especially spoilerific for SH:Homecoming and SH3. Long post is long, as there is a lot of stuff to talk about for this to make sense.

The strange occurrences in the games all come back to whatever The Order is doing, The Order being a cult in the area with their own sects.There are four mains sects: Sect of the Holy Woman, which wants to birth god; Sect of the Holy Mother, which involves a ritual to revive the Mother, and only comes up in SH4; Sect of Valtiel, focused on punishment and beside from a connection to Pyramid Head really doesn't do much in the games; and the Sect of Shepherd's Glen, which is what all of SH: Homecoming is about. Right now, The Order sounds like any religion if you look closely.

Now here's where it gets messy. If you pay attention to all the sects, The Order suddenly becomes this weird amalgamation of religions you can see in the real world, usually Western religions. Let's start with the Sect of the Holy Woman.

Saint Alessa. Image from The Silent Hill Wiki

The woman in the picture above is the focus of SH1 and SH3: Alessa. Alessa was born with special powers and her mother, Dahlia Gillespie, is the head of the Sect of the Holy Woman...which believes that in order to birth god a woman with special powers has to be burned alive. Yeah, this is where things start going sour for everyone. They didn't kill Alessa in the blaze and Alessa managed to split her soul into herself and a baby which Harry Mason picks up. This baby is now called Cheryl Mason. Cheryl convinces Harry to go to Silent Hill to stop her nightmares (caused by Alessa being in agony) and the first game is set into action. Harry experiences an isolated Silent Hill full of monsters, thanks to Alessa's psychic powers. The game technically has four endings, but for the sake of continuity, the "true" ending is one of the ones where Harry is given a baby by Alessa, one he will call Heather, as in the protagonist of SH3. The picture above is a painting Heather can find in the game, where it is given the caption "Saint Alessa: Mother of God, Daughter of God" and Heather will say both the woman and the baby are herself. SH3 focuses on Heather's struggle with another member of the sect who want her to birth god, but at least this time they don't try to burn Heather...they just try to make her miserable by killing her father and destroying her sanity via monsters.

The important thing for now is the picture. They call her Saint Alessa, something that only occurs in parts of the Christian religion in the real world. She even has that thin halo that can be seen in art of Saints from the Renaissance onwards. Surprisingly the baby doesn't have the halo. I think that's because they want to emphasize the saint, who will birth god, has to be of childbearing age, not a child herself (despite the plan in the first game). The Christian-esque theme naming also occurs in the cult as you do have priests and priestesses, with Dahlia and Claudia both being priestesses. Curiously, in SH3 you can hear a tape of someone going to Confession (you can also enter a Confession booth and hear someone's confession later in the game), where they address "Father Vincent" and talk about "Sister Claudia."

The God of the Order. Image from The Silent Hill Wiki

Also of note for this sect is the god they worship. The god they worship is primarily as sun deity, as evidence by the track Sun on the SH3 soundtrack. The picture above shows the god, the central figure in the red dress. You may have noticed that's a woman. Goddess worship has been around for some time, but this adds the aspect of making the Goddess (who can also be called God) a sun deity, giving the religion a more ancient religion feel. This is especially evident in "Sun" where she is not the creator of humans, but rather the creator of happiness, night, day and other things, but dies before creating paradise. The Order has successfully combined an ancient religion with a more modern one. The Order wants to birth a god to create Paradise (SH3)/cause the apocalypse (SH1). In SH3, The Order is given a more sympathetic angle, with Claudia fully admitting she'll never go to Paradise because of what she's done. However, throughout the games, you find out The Order, while centered in Silent Hill, isn't all that popular. Given the fact that it's very close to Christianity (when God is born, Paradise happens, etc.) it's hard to see why. As you go further into the story, you find out the members of The Order, while known, are not well liked, especially Dahlia's crew.

Painting of Pyramid Head and executed. Image from Silent Hill Wiki

There's where the different sects come in. The Order is an old religion for the area, that's where the Sect of Valtiel (another Christian-esque name, especially since Valtiel is the caretaker and messenger of God in SH series) comes in. They were popular back in the early days of Silent Hill, the Sect of Valtiel being those who dish out punishment, i.e. executioners. Look at the picture above, and just pretend Pyramid Head is a guy in a red hood and there's a big tree in the fog- looks like a normal execution of prisoners now. SH2 even includes a puzzle involving hanging prisoner (a personal favorite). This is the more practical aspect of The Order-judging the guilty. Here we can make the assumption the The Order created order in the town. The Order tried to continue its good way my making orphanages. Unfortunately, it got greedy and turned them into brainwashing centers which would eventually lead to the 21 Sacraments (aka 21 murders), Walter Sullivan, the Sect of the Holy Mother and the plot of SH4.

Recall that there is four sects. I have mentioned three. The last sect is the Sect of Shepherd's Glen, Shepherd's Glen being the town where SH:Homecoming takes place starring Alex Shepherd. This game takes a twist for the weird for many fans as you don't go to Silent Hill and The Order is cursory. However, it takes a new spin on the religion. Whereas SH3 brought a lot of Christian-esque aspects, Homecoming takes it to the ancient religion. The Sect of Shepherd's Glen involved the four founding families of the town, where they each had to sacrifice one family member every 50 years in order to stop the town from looking like Silent Hill in nightmare mode. You play the game when this went wrong. Alex accidentally killed his brother before the sacrifices were due, throwing the whole ritual off so when the other three children were sacrificed it didn't go well.

You encounter the children as your four bosses: Asphyxia, who looks a lot like the human centipede; Sepulcher, a tree-corpse hybrid that can smoosh you; Scarlet , a very, very very, creepy doll (oh god she's going to eat me); and Amnion, a giant spider. The names here are the important part. All of these represent some sort of element. Asphyxia is air- she is defeated when Alex lets the main head breathe, the child died by suffocation. Sepulcher is earth-the child was buried alive, the back is covered with plants. Amnion is water-reference to amnionic fluid in pregnant women, Alex's brother drowned, you can see him being "birthed" when Amnion is defeated. Scarlet is the oft-forgotten ether, the Greek fifth element that was basically everywhere and helped with life- Scarlet was killed by dismemberment for her blood, the monster has a fast beating heart. Notice the missing element here is fire. Scroll back up to the Saint Alessa picture. See the orange in the background? Remember how they tried to make Alessa birth god the first time? Alessa is fire. Shepherd's Glen can't have a fire sacrifice as that belongs to The Order in Silent Hill, for their god. The Order of Silent Hill fits neatly into monotheism and a classical religious scheme connected more to nature worship.

Now what does this mean? The Order's hybridity is a fascinating take, since it combines aspects of two types of major religion. It seems to have the best of both worlds, with split sects so people can pick and choose which aspect they like better. So why does it suck so much? Perhaps it's a subtle swipe at religion, but I think the hybridity actually defuses that. The Order is no religion in particularly, yet the basis for all religions at the same time. This ambiguity means it goes beyond religion Remember how I said earlier that The Order's philosophy was pretty sound? I think that means that no matter what the intentions, the actions are more important. SH3 and SH:Homecoming both have The Order trying to do something good: create paradise and keep the town safe. However, for their religion, they caused trauma, trauma that manifested itself in reality in the form of monsters. Perhaps it's a warning to watch your actions, as the ends don't always justify the means. Unless you're into giant monsters that want to eat you.