The Wicked + The Divine. Ongoing Spoilers, Theories, and Fan Feels.

[CRaymond]

Ananke's sister was the first Persephone. Persephone(s) are always the 12th and final god. They are almost always immediately slaughtered by Ananke(s).

Minerva(s) are not and never have been gods. Minerva(s) are relayed their miracles through a connection to the living Ananke(s), similar to the current situation with Mimir and Woden. "Ananke" is a parasite persona that persists through choosing hosts and completing the ritual. The machine-that-does-nothing pushes the Ananke persona into the Minerva. What remains of the Ananke woman is the Minerva persona of the previous Recurrence.

The Great Darkness is universal order seeking to reassert itself, and is emboldened by Persephone(s), its goddess. Ananke(s) lie to the pantheons of each Recurrence that the Darkness is the enemy.

David Blake was close to discovering the truth about the Recurrence, Ananke, and the Darkness, so Ananke struck him a deal: sacrifice your son and enjoy his powers as a god, and be loyal... or die.

[Factor]

Ananke's sister was the first Persephone. Persephone(s) are always the 12th and final god. They are almost always immediately slaughtered by Ananke(s).

Minerva(s) are not and never have been gods. Minerva(s) are relayed their miracles through a connection to the living Ananke(s), similar to the current situation with Mimir and Woden. "Ananke" is a parasite persona that persists through choosing hosts and completing the ritual. The machine-that-does-nothing pushes the Ananke persona into the Minerva. What remains of the Ananke woman is the Minerva persona of the previous Recurrence.

The Great Darkness is universal order seeking to reassert itself, and is emboldened by Persephone(s), its goddess. Ananke(s) lie to the pantheons of each Recurrence that the Darkness is the enemy.

David Blake was close to discovering the truth about the Recurrence, Ananke, and the Darkness, so Ananke struck him a deal: sacrifice your son and enjoy his powers as a god, and be loyal... or die.

God, now I'm feeling dumb. Missed a lot of these.

[CRaymond]

God, now I'm feeling dumb. Missed a lot of these.

Please don’t think any of this is OBVIOUS. I’m doing my best to infer wtf is happening and the above is my best guess. Please please please debate.

[JKtheMac]

Ananke's sister was the first Persephone. Persephone(s) are always the 12th and final god. They are almost always immediately slaughtered by Ananke(s).

Minerva(s) are not and never have been gods. Minerva(s) are relayed their miracles through a connection to the living Ananke(s), similar to the current situation with Mimir and Woden. "Ananke" is a parasite persona that persists through choosing hosts and completing the ritual. The machine-that-does-nothing pushes the Ananke persona into the Minerva. What remains of the Ananke woman is the Minerva persona of the previous Recurrence.

The Great Darkness is universal order seeking to reassert itself, and is emboldened by Persephone(s), its goddess. Ananke(s) lie to the pantheons of each Recurrence that the Darkness is the enemy.

David Blake was close to discovering the truth about the Recurrence, Ananke, and the Darkness, so Ananke struck him a deal: sacrifice your son and enjoy his powers as a god, and be loyal... or die.

I am not sure we can make the statement that Minerva isn't a god. Just that she is the individual that stays alive to become Ananke, which if either (or both) are real deities is open to interpretation at the moment. I can't think of an obvious reason mythologically why Minerva would be linked to Ananke, so it is most likely that Minerva is just a cover identity, but we can't be positive, and we can't be sure she is actually Ananke. She isn't named in the 6,000 year flashback.

The other possibility is this is all linked through mystery cults, (which has been part of all my pet theories for a long while), and that Minerva is actually Kore in some way. That would make early Persephone and Ananke sisters in that they would actually share an identity.

The machine that does nothing almost certainly has nothing to do with it. We also have nothing to link the Great Darkness to Persephone, and we don't really know what it is. We have very little to go on right now.

The skull eye reveal for Minerva suggests that The Destroyer may be linked to all three in some way, at least in this recurrence.

Kore is usually identified with the maiden before she becomes abducted and becomes Persephone. Often translated as just "girl" or "maid". Perhaps not coincidently it can mean the pupil of the eye.

[JKtheMac]

To be honest, I'm completely lost with this series. I'll keep on reading, but it's getting pretty confusing.
Do we know what happened to Ananke's sister? Is she Minerva somehow?

As a general point, I would suggest the series rewards rereading carefully. There is an awful lot going on in the early comics that was hidden from us and that casts those early chapters in a different light. There are still some mysteries that need clearing up, so if you don't understand everything then that is by design. We know for example that the Ananke/Minerva solution is inherently evil because it beheads people and then uses them in a blood ritual, but we don't know if it is "necessary." For all we know Ananke may be saving the world every cycle, and the fact that Ananke can translate literally to "necessity" might be a clue.

The most recent mystery is what is 'Rule 4'

Rule 1 is Ananke will be born as the maiden and live to be a crone, while Persephone will be the mother.
Rule 2 is there must be 12 gods. The gods are divided into three, one for each of Maid/Mother/Crone. all must be gone by 'the end' including Ananke.
Rule 3 is Ananke chooses who becomes a god. They are referred to as children but presumably adolescent counts. Persephone has to be one of them, the last one.
Rule 4 ?

It is also worth noting that apparently the twelve are not inclusive of Persephone, so is Ananke bending the rules? Is there a fake god? Persephone considers Ananke's plan fraught with a flaw. That as soon as the gods realise what her plan is they will realise that she is not a choice but "necessity". In many ways Ananke is named right there in #34.

6,000 years ago Ananke betrayed family and friends to construct her ritual. So structurally we would expect her ritual to be brought down by the twelve acting as friends and family again. Ananke seems to actively work against this. Keeping them divided covertly.

That original pantheon are all old, which suggests the two year rule is entirely made up.

We saw the gods divide into three -Anarchy/Learn the Truth/Save the World. Do these match the Maiden/Mother/Crone idea? Is Persephone siding with Anarchy actually a vote for youth culture? We can assume that Baal's 'Save the world' is the way of the crone.

There may be some link with survivors. Persephone gets her grandchild to run away and instructs him to "live as long as you are able." Is that a story seed? In the Romantic era they make a survivor. Is this also a story seed? Is 4 related to Persephone having children. Is she pregnant?

The idea of the recurrence is related to the idea that the human race renews itself completely in the span of a lifetime. In 100 years give or take everyone that is alive was born in that period. We don't carry the past with us, we pass it on. As a species we are mortal, not just as an individual. Culture is cyclical. We repeat certain patterns by necessity. Major events are dealt with in the same ways, always thinking we are changing the world but always repeating key steps.

Surely the underlying message of this story is we should not be slaves to the past? That we have the capacity to make our culture anew and we don't need to continually repeat ourselves. That this modern era has the greatest capacity for us to learn from the past. We have the past at our fingertips at all times, we can discern the patterns that enslave us, we can remove the filters that recast the past as 'necessary future.'

I strongly suspect that sometime in the pre-Hellenistic period Persephone was able to fashion the mystery cults to carry the secrets of rebirth and renewal in a way that doesn't involve slaughter and immortality. That Gillen's message is related to the revelatory power of modern culture to enact change in us as individuals and to bring that change to bear in our culture, changing ourselves and our destiny. A revelatory tipping point, or to use the modern jargon singularity. The same inherent message as the more occult Promethea by Alan Moore. Less shrouded in ritual and magic, more democratically focused on cultural creativity. We are all children of Persephone. We have power over death.

[risk_one]

Please don’t think any of this is OBVIOUS. I’m doing my best to infer wtf is happening and the above is my best guess. Please please please debate.

I like the idea that Minerva is not a proper god, it would explain why Persephone is the 13th god, when the sisters agreed on 12. However, in 1923, Minerva kills Ananke (against her wishes), so she must have some power of her own.

I think we can safely assume that the sister's god is Persephone, considering the way Ananke killed her immediately after awakening her. I agree that that's probably what she's been doing throughout history.

Here are my inferences/theories. Some bits I put in spoiler tags, because they would be big reveals if true...

• The "great darkness" is actually spoilers:

  a metaphor for death. Specifically, Ananke's death. Everything she's been doing for the past 6000 years has just been to prevent her own death. The could of black dots is something Minerva conjures up to keep the Pantheon distracted (note that they only ever attacked Minerva).

  end of spoilers
• Ananke does not have eternal life, she lives as long as any non-divine human being. Every recurrence, she awakens Minerva and shares her memories. At the end of the recurrence, Minerva performs the ritual, kills the current Ananke, and is allowed to live a normal human life. 90 years later, at the next recurrence, she is an old woman (Ananke), and awakens a new Minerva. This is what the whole maid/mother/crone thing is about. Ananke picks Minerva (the maid), her sister picks Persephone (the mother) and Ananke picks again: the crone. Her trick is that she gets to be present twice at every recurrence, which is why her sister compliments her move. I think we're supposed to infer this from the books at this point.
• Rule two (or possibly rule four) specifies that Ananke cannot perform the ritual until the entire pantheon (save Minerva and the four heads) are dead. This is why Minerva learned to play innocent and secretly collect living heads. I expect she doesn't need to decapitate the four gods used for the ritual, but it just makes it easier to keep them alive and out of the way until the rest of the pantheon is dead.
• This is why spoilers:

  the recurrence is once every 90 years. Not because of some mystical reason: Ananke can trigger the recurrence whenever she likes. It's just that she lives a normal, full human life and then when her time is up, she triggers a recurrence to get herself a new god body. This may explain why there was a 1640s Pantheon... Ananke became ill or her life was in danger in some way that only a recurrence could resolve.

  end of spoilers
• More of a guess: the machine-that-does-nothing was a way for Minerva to fake her own death. She gets teleported away as the machine creates an interesting show and somebody kills Ananke. She then waits for the rest of the pantheon to kill each other and then she performs the ritual. At this point she already had three heads. She could either have stolen Mimir for the fourth or used the confusion of a Pantheon battle to get her fourth.

Some open questions:

• The ring of icons in 455 showed all but one of the Pantheon as dead, including any possible Minerva. Do the icons lie to us? They do if Minerva is not a proper god (because she's always included instead of Persephone.
• What does the exchange "Once again, we return", "Not quite" at the end of the 1923 Pantheon mean? It seems to imply that at that point Ananke thought they had failed. Does "we return" refer to the god Ananke going back to wherever the Gods come form?
• Exactly what is Minerva? She seems to have her own powers. If she's a god, then why are there 13 gods instead of 12 (it seems the sisters were pretty clear on that)?
• What the heck is rule four?

Apologies if any of this is super-obvious or has been discussed already.

[CRaymond]

What’s also significant is that it took four gods to resurrect a dead body. Lucifer, Woden, Inanna, and Morrigan were able to combine their power and turn the corpse of Hades into The Creature.

Also: the four gods who are “consumed” in the young Ananke ritual transfer their powers to young Ananke. The skull eyes in Minerva 1923 was a red herring, as we’re led to think skull eyes are a manifesto on of Persephone. Remember that among the skulls consumed by 1923 Ananke was the Josephine Baker Persephone. The 2015 Ananke will consume the powers of Lucifer, Inanna, Tara... and 1 more.

When The 1830s Creature rises, he seeks to consume his creator gods. He succeeds, with Woden willingly letting herself be consumed. When we meet The Creature again, I suspect he/it will be a technophile.

Lastly, the 1830s Mary Shelley seems to be the last legitimate Woden. Both the 1920s and 2010s “Wodens” were exposed to be frauds keeping Mimirs.

[TalibanGodTrapjesusOfjerusalem]

So what the heck is going on with baal?! Whats gonna happen with him?! I guess he lied and was hamon and not hadad or maybe he is both?! Some many questions

[JKtheMac]

Wow. Issue 36 is ballsy. 11 pages of montage! As a digital reader each page was a surprise as I was half expecting it to stop or go to a different panel layout. But no it kept coming!

Then three pacing pages of minimal text. Lets be clear, this issue hits the normal 21 pages, so the red pages are not a problem, but again without a physical copy they were a surprise. They certainly had the required impact. It is a classic horror beat to slow down the reader with simple discursive sentences with added weight. Either by separating them out as paragraph or in a comic giving them space and weight.

I guess it is debatable whether the eleven page montage contained the amount of material we would expect from an issue. Art wise nobody was slacking, and the detail contained, not least the choosing of each era, the subtle questions raised in the sequence, and the research for the costumes and background, contains a lot of depth. Indeed it felt very traditional even if exaggerated. McKelvie always feels traditional to me. His simple style with minimal variation in line width, combined with some of his flowing layout choices, always reminds me of Hergé, (which is a deliberate compliment as Hergé is one, if not the greatest all-time for me).

I had to nod when I read Gillen's notes in the back, and he commented on how long Egypt was a major player. That was also something I noticed as I worked my way through the pages. It is something we intrinsically know, but at the same time we easily compress that time period in our minds as a simple unified thing.

Got to say I called the Persephone reveal. It was hinted at but never definitively stated or brought out in the main text. That was handled very astutely, and to give Baal some credit, I am not sure he would have reacted any differently if the reveal had definitely suggested somebody else. I think we can pretty much assume who it actually was. (Skirting the issue while this is a relatively new reveal. Even though I have been saying it more plainly as a prediction for a little while.)

What I am not sure about is the line "I wait and watch him go." Is Persephone suggesting Baal is dead?

[CRaymond]

Ananke's sister was the first Persephone. Persephone(s) are always the 12th and final god. They are almost always immediately slaughtered by Ananke(s).

I was right!

Also, I want a giant poster of all 65 encounters.

[JKtheMac]

What’s also significant is that it took four gods to resurrect a dead body. Lucifer, Woden, Inanna, and Morrigan were able to combine their power and turn the corpse of Hades into The Creature.

Also: the four gods who are “consumed” in the young Ananke ritual transfer their powers to young Ananke. The skull eyes in Minerva 1923 was a red herring, as we’re led to think skull eyes are a manifesto on of Persephone. Remember that among the skulls consumed by 1923 Ananke was the Josephine Baker Persephone. The 2015 Ananke will consume the powers of Lucifer, Inanna, Tara... and 1 more.

When The 1830s Creature rises, he seeks to consume his creator gods. He succeeds, with Woden willingly letting herself be consumed. When we meet The Creature again, I suspect he/it will be a technophile.

Lastly, the 1830s Mary Shelley seems to be the last legitimate Woden. Both the 1920s and 2010s “Wodens” were exposed to be frauds keeping Mimirs.

Some good points.

The number four is more than just the number of the rules. The four clicks of the fingers does seem to be a deliberate motif that ties into music as well as the ritual.

The power of four gods does seem to be a thing.

Four is also the number of gods in each faction. (If they were all alive of course.)

Exactly how Woden comes into this story is quite obscured at the moment, but it does seem to be tied up with The Creature / Prometheus (from Mary Shelly's sub-title for Frankenstein 'the Modern Prometheus'). Or as she is called out by Inanna "I suspect we all know who the monster is". Which is both a recognition that we recognise Prometheus even though she is a female version, and the mirror of Adam and Eve that is usually implied when evoking this story.

I can't help thinking this may also be a subtle nod to this wider Prometheus story - including Hephaestus, Hermes and Pandora. Mainly because it is such a prevalent theme in the kind of myth, literature and indeed comics that Gillen seems to like referencing. Also I see Persephone as potentially bringing forth Hope at the end (call me an optimist). Hey maybe its gonna end on an X-Men reference after-all!

As to the skull eyes I don't see it as a red herring. It is probably a reveal, directly related to the dance of death that Persephone and Ananke are embarked upon. This latest issue brings that even more firmly into the foreground.

[CRaymond]

I'm lead to believe at this point that from a galactic POV, WicDiv is a story about old vs new. Obviously, right? Gods being artists and creatives lends itself to the theme, and the importance of "Persephone" being the pivotal goddess suggests her unborn child is Novelty. Soft bet only.

Maybe ALL divine children are Novelty, and thus slaughtered by Ananke. Woden's and Inanna's children were killed.

I almost entertained the notion that Claire Claremont's Inanna was actually Persephone, given her pregnancy, but what purpose would that lie serve?

[JKtheMac]

I would go with what Gillen actually talks about, which is this is a story about the cultural renewal of mankind every hundred years or so, and also about what artists do once they gain success. So no, I think it is only about Old vs New as a secondary consequence of the fact that each reoccurrence happens to be about kicking off a new age.

I would say it is more about the cyclical nature of history and a fight to either reassert the cycle or break the cycle, with reassertion apparently winning on the surface.

I think there are three factions representing three generations, fighting over the future of the fourth generation. The gods represent the influencers of that next generation.

[CRaymond]

What are these generations in your view?

[JKtheMac]

What are these generations in your view?

Watch this space. I have a very long post in the works that tries to cover this theory. It is not a simple thing to express.