Elden Ring’s vast and intricate world is more than a backdrop for gameplay. It draws from a complex tapestry of real-world mythologies, legends, and cosmological ideas that echo across cultures. From ancient Greek concepts of order and chaos to Norse visions of death and rebirth, the Lands Between carry the weight of more than just fantasy. They channel a deep sense of mythic memory, structured around cycles, divine rebellion, and the shattering of cosmic law.
Order, Ruin, and the Eternal Cycle
At the heart of Elden Ring is the idea of a shattered divine order. This idea parallels several mythic frameworks, particularly the concept of cyclical destruction and renewal seen in Hinduism and Norse mythology. Just as Ragnarök brings about the end and rebirth of the Norse world, the shattering of the Elden Ring results in a fragmented reality yearning for cohesion. The Erdtree, central to the game’s visual and spiritual landscape, reflects the Norse Yggdrasil, a world tree that binds realms and gods together. It also resembles the concept of the Axis Mundi found in many mythologies, from Mesopotamian ziggurats to the Mayan World Tree.
Yet Elden Ring avoids direct analogues. It rearranges these concepts to suit a world built on the ruins of its own theological failure. The Golden Order represents stability, but one enforced through control and the denial of death, fertility, and chaos. Like many historical religious systems, it is presented as both majestic and flawed.
Divine Hierarchies and Rebellion
The demigods of Elden Ring are not unlike the gods of Greek mythology, ambitious, vain, powerful, and prone to conflict. Figures like Radahn, Rykard, and Malenia operate like the Olympians or Titans, often driven by personal motives or loyalty to particular visions of power. Their divine nature does not make them morally superior. Rather, it places them within a recurring mythic theme: the divine schism.
Ranni’s rejection of the Greater Will and pursuit of her own fate recalls the Promethean archetype, defying cosmic authority for autonomy. But where Prometheus brought fire, Ranni brings cold and darkness, signalling a different kind of freedom. Her path reflects Buddhist ideas of release from worldly cycles, a stepping away from fate entirely.
Fate, Death, and the Stars
FromSoftware’s worlds have long used stars as symbols of destiny and hidden truths. In Elden Ring, the stars are part of a metaphysical system that governs fate. The imprisoned stars, and their eventual return following Radahn’s defeat, are evocative of myths where celestial bodies are bound or lost, such as the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna’s descent or the tale of Fenrir swallowing the sun.
The game’s relationship with death is another key theme rooted in real-world belief systems. The shunning of Destined Death echoes religious movements that sought to escape mortality through divine favour, immortality cults, or suppression of natural decay. The reintroduction of death through Ranni and Maliketh, then, becomes not a defeat but a restoration of balance – something closer to Egyptian Ma’at or Taoist harmony than nihilism.
Gods That Came From Elsewhere
The Greater Will is never physically present. It operates through intermediaries, like the Two Fingers, in a manner reminiscent of Gnostic or Zoroastrian systems where the ultimate divine source is distant, unknowable, and filtered through layers of emissaries or aeons. Its impersonal dominance and lack of moral clarity call to mind the Old Testament’s more cosmic depictions of Yahweh, or the detached Brahman of Hindu thought.
Other outer gods, like the Formless Mother, the Frenzied Flame, and the god of rot, are even less defined. Their ambiguous nature recalls Lovecraftian horror, but also reflects the animistic and chthonic gods of ancient cultures, where deities of madness, decay, or fertility existed outside ordered pantheons.
The Human Struggle for Meaning
Elden Ring never spells out what is right or true. Each ending is bound to a philosophy drawn from mythic precedent. Whether one sides with the cold freedom of Ranni, the chaotic embrace of the Frenzied Flame, or the restoration of the Golden Order, the decision mirrors mythological struggles with fate, divinity, and selfhood.
The game succeeds not by mimicking myths directly, but by reconstructing their emotional and philosophical core. It presents a world where the sacred has fractured, where gods falter and mortals grasp for purpose in the ruins. That uncertainty is what makes the Lands Between feel not only ancient, but eerily real.
