The Undiscovered Secrets of the Amnesia Games (NEW 2026)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]There are some mysteries in life that will forever elude human understanding.

[00:00:04]Like why is it a penny for your thoughts if you have to put your two cents in? Or more relevantly, why I, a YouTuber known primarily for analyzing horror games, have never done a video on the Amnesia games in over a decade. To truly understand that would be to surrender your mind to the chaos of the Elder Gods. But in all seriousness, people have been recommending the Amnesia games to me for years, mostly because of their use of occult symbols and concepts, and they wanted to know if there was anything deeper going on beneath the surface. To be honest, I avoided doing so for a long time because I failed to go beyond a surface level appraisal.

[00:00:41]Yes, I saw alchemical symbols and occult diagrams, but they all seem to be window dressing without any thought given to their inherent meaning. But recently, I decided to look at the games from a new angle. And I did that by researching the historical figures that the first game referenced, namely the life and works of Hinrich Cornelius Agria and Johan Ver.

[00:01:02]Once I did that, what once appeared to be random turned out to not only contain a variety of secrets, but a level of attention to detail that I've almost never encountered in any video game. And today, I want to show you exactly what those details are. Before I get started, remember to give this video a like. The YouTube algorithm is rewarding liking and commenting a lot more lately, so doing that is a quick and easy way to help me out tremendously. And second, if you like the type of analysis I do here, please consider supporting me on Patreon or joining my YouTube membership section. I will leave links to that in the description box below. Let us begin with the affforementioned Hinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a real life occultist who was included as a character in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Though we only meet him towards the end of that game, his influence can be felt throughout both that game and with what he actually believed. The two primary things that one must understand are that Agria was a Christian, a Catholic to be specific, and that he lived during the Renaissance period. Not only that, he embodied the spirit of the Renaissance.

[00:02:06]He sought to justify Christianity as the one true religion through his attempt to recover and unify the knowledge of the ancient world. Like many thinkers of his time, he looked all the way back to Greek, Roman, and hermetic traditions.

[00:02:21]And then he attempted to find the common truths between those traditions and Christianity by studying the past and synthesizing different systems of thought. He believed one could not only uncover a deeper understanding of reality itself, but do so in order to reconcile one's fallen soul with God.

[00:02:38]And the way he thought one would do that was through magic. Literal magic. But what exactly did his studies unveil and what kind of magical system did he produce? These are primarily outlined in his most famous work, the three books of occult philosophy. He divides the cosmos into three parts. There is the elemental world which corresponds to the physical world we inhabit. There's the celestial or astral world inhabited by the planets and the stars in the sky. And then there's the divine world, otherwise known as the intellectual world, which Agrippa equated to Plato's idea of the world of forms. Once again, going back to ancient Greece. Agrippa sought to align these three worlds through a system of correspondences. By knowing what parts of the physical world align with the celestial world and the divine world, one's soul could virtually climb the ladder to heaven. This idea is captured in the classic hermetic principle, as above so below. By recognizing what reflects the heavens above in the physical world, one could begin that process of ascendance. As for what elements reflect the heavens, this is where the alchemic idea of metal equating to the planets comes in.

[00:03:48]Although granted, it's an idea that existed as far back as ancient Mesopotamia and then got systematized into the alchemical and occult traditions by people like Hermes Trismagist, so of Ponopoulos and eventually Agria. By attuning one soul to iron, for example, that would align one soul with the planet Mars.

[00:04:06]Progressively tuning one soul to the other metals would then purify the soul in a way that would allow them to reach the divine world. But for all of this to work, there has to be something that connects these worlds together.

[00:04:18]Something that makes the idea of tuning possible in the first place. Something that connects all three worlds together.

[00:04:24]And to him, that thing was the quintessence. This is an idea that he borrowed from Aristotle who proposed that alongside the affforementioned Plato's concept of the four classical elements there existed a fifth element known as ether. This is where the root of the word quintessence comes from for quint equates to fifth the fifth essence. Quoting from agria, they imagine that such a medium is the world spirit, which is what we call the quintessence, because it is not from the four elements, but is a certain fifth, subsisting above and beyond them.

[00:04:59]Therefore, in such a spirit, it is necessary to require a medium for celestial souls to belong to dense bodies and grant wonderful gifts.

[00:05:08]Indeed, this spirit is close to what is in the body of the world, as is what is in our human bodies. In the same way as the virtues of our souls are applied to the members of our bodies, the virtues of the world soul are extended to everything by the quintessence. To simplify what agria is saying here, the quintessence/ether is a universal life force. It connects all levels of reality and is what permits life to flourish. For example, through the influence of the planet Mars, it transmits its quintessence down to Earth and allows iron to grow beneath the ground. But most importantly, Agria believed that the quintessence wasn't just something one could attuned to. It was something that could be extracted and used. And once that happens, it could act more powerfully and perfectly and also more readily generate their like because within it exists the very force that gives rise to life itself.

[00:06:04]Now, if that sounds familiar to you Amnesia fans, it should because we are introduced to a substance in those games that behaves in almost exactly the same way as the quintessence. The substance that exists within all things that can be extracted and not only help life flourish, but prolong it is vet. In Amnesia, the dark descent, the character Alexander extracts vete from his victims. The denisonens of the other world in Amnesia Rebirth use vet to not only do the same thing but to power all of their technology. My favorite use of this substance is with the orbs and the portals in both these games. This is perfectly aligned with the fact that the quintessence is the same thing as ether.

[00:06:48]For ether is the fabric of spaceime, the void that surrounds all of us. If it can be manipulated, one could transmit themselves across the cosmos in a way that is roughly similar to what Agrippa desired. But it's important to note that Agria didn't view the quintessence as something to exploit. His goal was to reconcile once fallen soul with the divine, not to extract and weaponize the very force that makes life possible.

[00:07:13]That's where Alexander's actions begin to diverge. Before I move on, I do want to acknowledge the elephant in the room that some of my regular viewers might have noticed. Vet, as it is presented in the game, is depicted in much the same way as it is in other video games I have covered on this channel. In keeping with a Grippa's perennialist outlook, the concept of the quintessence and ether is very similar to the eastern concept ofqi, which is the universal life force by a different name. Whether it's in games like Shadow of the Colossus, Final Fantasy, Xenolade, Devil May Cry, Securiro, or the Zelda games, it almost always shows up as a turquoise substance that can not only produce magical effects, but manipulates spaceime. But from a Grippa's perspective, that similarity wouldn't be surprising at all. His entire worldview is built on the idea that these concepts aren't isolated, but are different expressions of the same underlying principle. In other words, Amnesia isn't doing something completely unique here, but is tapping into something much older. Now that I have established a Grippa system and its relation to Amnesia's fate, I can make sense of some of the symbols that we see in the game. Let's start with the one you see right when you boot up the first game. On the loading screen, we see the occult symbols for various planets. On the outer ring are the symbols for Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. In the middle circle are the symbols for Pluto, Venus, and Earth, and the Sun sits in the middle. A variation of this same symbol can be found at various places in the game, with the only difference being that the alchemical symbol for the sun replaces an actual depiction of the sun in the middle. Going by Agria's logic, the purpose of this symbol might be to transmute the energies of the planets.

[00:08:59]Now, it's entirely possible that this is done so that Alexander might be able to return to his home world. But another possibility is that one would use this circle to transmute one's being to a divine state. In alchemy, the sun represents gold, and the gold of the sun was synonymous with the philosopher stone, which was the ultimate goal of alchemy. Only by elevating one's personal being to that state might one be able to obtain the philosopher stone and in turn perform divine feats.

[00:09:28]Granted, I think the former possibility is more likely here. Another picture I want to draw attention to is the prevalence of this painting throughout Brenenburgg Castle in the first game.

[00:09:39]Obviously, this is a depiction of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion. Now, why would this otherworldly being decorate his halls with the god of a race that he detested? Maybe Alexander let a grippa hang these paintings to appease his Christian tendencies. But I think a more likely possibility lies with what Jesus represents alchemically. When Jesus's side was pierced with the lance of longginus following his death on the cross, a mixture of blood and water poured out of his side, which was then cut in the same cup that Jesus used at the last supper. The cup most commonly known as the Holy Grail. That mythical substance that poured from Jesus's side was designated by the alchemists as the elixir vet, equivalent to the life-giving substance or quintessence of reality. By the way, for those who are fans of Indiana Jones, this is why eternal life is granted to those who drink from the Holy Grail. In Alexander's case, I wonder if he hung these paintings himself out of fascination with Jesus because he intuitively understood the similarity between the vet of reality and the elixir vet that laid within Jesus's blood. Now, unfortunately, while I could draw a reasonable interpretation from these two symbols, I found almost all the other ones a lot more difficult to decipher, there are a couple of other transmutation circles drawn with chalk, but due to their textures, the lettering is impossible to make out with this symbol. The only thing I can say with some certainty is that the eight-ointed star has Christian, Mesopotamian, and alchemic purposes. In Christianity, it is equated with the star of Bethlehem, which supposedly shown on the day of Jesus's birth. In ancient Mesopotamia, it was the primary symbol for the goddess Ishtar. In alchemy, it is the symbol for creation. And this is because the eight inner points supposedly represent the four classical elements and the four qualities they produce, which like the quintessence sit at the basis of all reality. One final thing I think you'll find interesting is that the eight-pointed star is used as the symbol for an item known as the elixir in the first Devil May Cry game. Notice how the star emerges from a single point in space. That's the four elements and four qualities emerging from the void at the beginning of time. And by uniting them in perfect unison, you produce the fifth element, the quintessence, the elixir. so appropriately illustrated with that turquoise color. Finally, there are what appeared to be various alchemical symbols on all the walls in the last couple of levels of the first Amnesia game. Interestingly, I had the hardest time trying to figure out what most of them were. The only ones I could cleanly decipher were these two, which are the symbols for putrifaction and sublimation in alchemy. I suppose one could say that these amongst all the other symbols are the recipe for crafting the vet. And the two decipherable steps might refer to the torturous process that a living being must go through in order to have that life force extracted. To putrify is to slowly kill or rot the body. And to sublimate is to heat something until it turns into vapor, which would symbolize the liberation of spirit from matter or in this case the vet from a human. In that sense, the extraction of vete mirrors the alchemical process itself where something must first be broken down before its essential nature can be separated and refined. Now, while agria was, in my opinion, more influential in shaping both Amnesia's story and the wider occult tradition, he wasn't the only person trying to make sense of these ideas. One of Agria's students played a role in both the game and in establishing the occult framework that would continue to be referenced to this day. That of course being Yan Vire. The historical Vire was an actual student of Agria who studied under him in his early youth. But where a Grippa laid the groundwork for understanding how these systems were meant to function, figures like Vire would begin to organize them into more structured forms. One of the most famous works in the occult tradition is known as the limageton, otherwise known as the lesser key of Solomon. Though Ver didn't write this text, both his and agria's work helped shape the traditions from which it emerged, particularly in a couple of its most well-known sections. The first is the Ars Goedia, a grimoire that cataloges various demons and provides the symbols and rituals believed to not only summon but command them. The other is the theia goedia which organizes less demonic and more neutral spirits into hierarchies while also outlining methods for invoking and interacting with them.

[00:14:28]Fire's influence can be felt quite clearly in the Ars Guedia through his own work the pseudo monarchia demonum.

[00:14:34]It draws from the same list of demon names that fire cataloged with mostly minor differences. Though his connection to the Thoria Goidia is less direct, both texts nonetheless emerge from the same broader tradition of trying to map the spiritual world into something structured. But there is one major difference between fires work and the Arsuia. The presence of symbols, sigils used to represent these entities, and those exact symbols show up everywhere in Amnesia Rebirth. Upon entering the aptly named alchemist chambers, you can see various diagrams on the wall. Of these, I was able to identify the sigils for three demons from the Arsuedia. The symbols for the demon Fornius, Enthusiius, and Neberius. In respect to the Theuria Goedia, an entire page was ripped straight from that book and used as a document in the game. The sigils here represent a king of aerial spirits named Azrael who rules a variety of subordinate spirits. But this is where things start to get a little strange because up until this point, the other world could be interpreted as something closer to the divine world of a Grippa's framework, a higher layer of reality or heaven. But the presence of these symbols from the Goedia suggests something else. A world of more ambiguous entities and in some cases what appear to be demons from hell.

[00:15:59]Which creates a bit of a problem. Is this a world of angels or demons? Well, the answer doesn't seem to be that it's one or the other. Because when you look a little closer, you start to find evidence of both. In the alchemist's chambers and various other places in the other world, you will find these tablets that start off with various alien scripts before transitioning into English. When I paused my footage and examined them closely, I deduced that they were based on two real life scripts. One is a language known as Yanakian, which was recorded by the English occultist John D, as well as his colleague Edward Kelly during seances.

[00:16:39]Supposedly, it is the language of angels and can be used to evoke their power.

[00:16:44]The other language is one that was codified by Agria in the third book of occult philosophy, one he referred to as the celestial alphabet. Depending on how the script was written, it could take on three forms. Celestial, Malachim, which is the Hebrew word for angels, and writing of the passage of the rivers, also known as transitis fluvi. The first and third variations of this script are found in the game. Here we find tangible connections between the characters of Agria and Fire from The Dark Descent in Rebirth. Virtually everybody that played this game would never have picked up on this, but the developers cared enough about the consistency of this world to pay attention to these details. Still, we are left with that nagging question.

[00:17:31]Why would the characters of Agria and Fire describe the other world as two fundamentally different things, as both a heaven and a hell? The answer is that technically the other world is not inherently either of those things. What Alexander and others like him were attempting to do was to bend the structure of reality to their will, to control it, and extract from it so they could give themselves an unearned shortcut to transcendence. But their hubris led to not only reality's distortion, but its corrective, the shadow. It isn't just some random force chasing the player. It's the universe's defense mechanism, its immune system, and it's responding accordingly. It is neither divine punishment nor demonic intervention, but the system looking to restore itself. When you look at it that way, the question was never really angels or demons. It was what happens when you try to control something that was never meant to be controlled in the first place.

[00:18:32]Yes, I talked about the shadow without bringing up Carl Young, which means I just brought up Carl Young. Damn it.

[00:18:38]>> Thank you so much for taking the time to watch. Remember to hit the like button if you like this video, and let me know what you thought of my analysis in the comment section below. I know this video focused primarily on The Dark Descent and Rebirth. If I did a follow-up video in the future, what would you like me to cover from A Machine for Pigs and the Bunker? Let me know. Until next time, remember to stay safe and stay yellow.