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Devil: Microcosm of Zion

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour." ~Peter 5:8

This quote (which should be noted as "1 Peter 5:8") opens the film Devil, in which 5 people, apparently total strangers, get stuck in a malfunctioning elevator, but soon realize that there is an even greater problem present. Those trying to get the stuck passengers out - some of the building's security personnel and a pair of police detectives - also see that something else is not right and it is soon suggested that the Devil has planned all of this to happen. Overall, the film plays out as a good horror film and is very far removed from the gratuitous slasher nonsense that seems to permeate the genre. And wouldn't you know it, in this film's interesting portrayal of lurking evil and subversion of spirit, there are some solid anti-Zionist themes.

That was one of the first images used to promote the film, a rather bleak and dark poster, but there is a subliminal hexagram there in the form of the elevator buttons. The "down" button acts as the V, however when put together with the "up" button we get a six-pointed star and not the usual Satanic pentagram. These two buttons are the only actual objects in the poster, the rest is writing - credits and the tag-line "Bad things happen for a reason," which suggests an ominous plan slowly coming together.

The film's opening sequence is a series of upside-down aerial shots of Philadelphia, the final of which enters a building, travels down an elevator shaft, where we'll spend most of the film, then flows into the building lobby, where the first key event takes place: a man falls onto a van parked outside. The janitor cleaning the lobby doesn't notice as he has head phones on and he is facing away from the windows. Odd, perhaps, but plausible. When the police begin to investigate the scene, the truck has rolled down the street and into an alleyway. The investigating detective even says that it must have bounced off of a concrete barrier before coming to a crooked stop at the end of the alley, thus it must have been a noisy trip, and here the real oddity plays out: no one noticed this. There are no witnesses in the middle of a big city and the detective himself figures out that the truck must have coasted down here. This was early morning, but any modern downtown has all sorts of business in which employees arrive to prep for the day before business hours, such as the janitor cleaning the lobby, but certainly not everyone was so distracted so as not to notice an out of control truck careening down a street!

This either means that the forces, which had propelled the previously described events were supernatural or that people just didn't bother care. Both notions will soon come into play.

No Coincidences
During a mundane week day, it's even raining outside, five people trickle into an elevator presumably to get to an appointment or work. Soon things start to go inexplicably bad and fear sets in and they all start to turn on one another - each one cares only about their own skin - and there are, most definitely, supernatural forces at work. The building's computers display information contradictory to what is happening, a mysterious face flashes on the security camera's display, and the elevator's lights flash on and off for no reason intermittently with the trapped people emerging from the darkness, first with wounds, but then they wind up getting killed off one by one. All of this seems to be contained within one elevator and everyone swears that that hadn't touched anyone else.

There is a narration in the film that tells, in episodes, a story about the Devil in which he rounds people up into one place so that he can torment them before taking their souls.

"When I was a child, my mother would tell me a story about how the Devil roams the Earth. Sometimes, she said, he would take human form so he could punish the damned on Earth before claiming their souls. The ones he chose would be gathered together and tortured as he hid amongst them, pretending to be one of them. I always believed my mother was telling me an old wives' tale."

This is basically a continuation of the idea presented in the opening quote. One of the security guards mentions to the detective a legend called "a Devil's meeting" which is essentially a template for the situation unfolding before them. Earlier in the film, the detective was having breakfast with a friend who told him "to truly feel free, you may have to start believing in something greater than yourself." If all goes well, this would be the realizing off greater ideals. However, all does not go well and the "greater thing" encountered is the Devil who seeks to make people into puppets and victims.

The detectives, the security officers and the building engineer all work to free the people trapped in the elevator, but things seem to get worse and worse. First, one of the passengers is wounded with what seems to be a serrated blade, then one of them dies with a shard of glass in his neck and the nerves of the survivors get worse and worse. The building engineer falls down the shaft, as he tries to make his way from the top of the shaft onto the top of the elevator car. Firemen are called in to hack through the wall so as to access the shaft from the side at the level where the car is stuck at. Yet, as everything seems to progress, though at a cost of life in certain instances, it doesn't seem to progress fast enough! The malevolence in the elevator car continues to torment the people and snuff them out.

The background narration at the point, when the fire department arrives at the scene, states that sometimes people would try to fight with force, but "some battles cannot be fought with weapons." This is a virtually exact transposition of Adolf Hitler's idea of "where we lack weapons, we must compensate with will power." It is the struggle of the spirit that makes men succeed - slowly the characters begin to realize this. Bowden, the main detective, even tells of a incident that happened 5 years ago and in which his wife and child were killed by a hit-and-run driver. This has led him to not believe in the Devil, for "people are bad enough by themselves." His idea of what goes on in the World has been entirely reduced down to people either doing good or bad, but now that's changing.

Bowden's background story becomes a key aspect of the film's action when the last remaining survivor in elevator ends up being revealed as the one who was the hit and run driver 5 years ago. At this point, the Devil makes his presence known, he is in the form of the older woman who was in the elevator and thought to have been the second one killed. By now, all the characters in the film have been revealed as having done bad deeds in the past and thus were slyly hoarded into this one place. Then, for what must have been hours of tension and mental strife that have led to nothing but violence and now culminate into an encounter with the Devil himself - "the lies we sell ourselves introduce us to him" is part of the narrated background story.

However, now the lies stop and the last one alive sees what he must do to get out: repent. He thinks back to the time when he committed the hit-and-run, he remembers the moment when saw the dead mother and child, and when he cowardly drove off leaving only a crudely written note. In realizing his past wrong doing, his past selfish actions, he takes the responsibility that was once avoided. For that, the Devil can't claim his soul for it is a soul that is actually struggling to be free of evil.

"God only helps those who are prepared to help themselves." ~Adolf Hitler

By stopping the lie that he has been living with, the man helps himself become of better moral conscience. This does not mean being let off the hook for his previous doings, but the important thing is that he puts an honest effort to set things right, though late it may be. As Detective Bowden drives the man to the police station and when they are driving down a long, dark stretch of road, a place where Bowden could easily have vengeance and fake a story (who wouldn't believe a cop?) and thus have simple satisfaction, he says that he forgives the man for what he did 5 years ago. In this scene, through the back windshield of the car we can see a V-shape of lights fading away in the distance as the car drives on. The V was the first introduction to the Devil on the promotional poster, but now it is a parting with the Devil as Bowden does the honorable thing.

The film's closing narration: "After my mother would finish her story, she would always comfort us. 'Don't worry,' she'd say. 'If the Devil is real, then God must be real, too.'"

Mainstream Evil
The film employs much mainstream imagery to convey its notion of evil, but it remains interesting nonetheless. For instance, the truck on which the suicide jumper lands is from a company called, Bethel Bread Co. and Bowden's family died on Bethlehem Pike, which tie in together - "Bethlehem" means "House of Bread" - as well as allude to the story of Christ. The building that serves as the film's setting is located on 333 Locust St; this can refer to the biblical story of plagues, but there is a real street of that name in Philadelphia, however the portrayal of it in this film is fictional. 333 is half of 666, the Number of the Beast.

The film's first shot in the opening sequence is the same shot that ends the film, however, the opening is upside-down, while the ending is the same shot, but now right side up. These are shots of the Philadelphia cityscape, which includes many pointed buildings, just like the triangles on the promotional poster. Thus, we have an upward triangle and a downward triangle - put those together and there is a hexagram. 333 + 333 = 666.

Numerology tends to lead to obsession and inevitable folly, so it is only good to briefly entertain it. In all probability, the filmmakers included it to have an easy understanding of the film be possible. Everyone "knows" that 666 = Devil. It's practically a selling point in pop-culture.

Visions of Zion
On this aspect the film is a bit more creative. In the opening sequence, as the shot travels down the elevator shaft, it is neither right side up nor upside down. In this location the triangles coexist and point both up and down - and this is where the Devil eventually appears. Then, right when the shot travels to a particular door in the shaft, it spins so as to come out right side up for its travel time in the lobby.

The red glare creates an inverted cross that goes "into" the V, reflecting the inversion of the original teachings of Gnostic Christanity into corrupt form of Judeo-Christianity. The elevator buttons are on the right and a number 6 is right above the door. In effect, the final moments of the opening sequence seem to revert the above cross and suggest that the film's outcome will ultimately be good. These opening shots are a small representation of what will now happen throughout the rest of the movie. And wouldn't you know it, the fist major event is a suicide by falling down, while the last event is an act of forgiveness and mercy, the sparing of a life.

The film's abundant triangle/mirror images all point to the hexagram and there are many notions to "flipping" in the film: the first of the main characters to die, a salesman of mattresses, suggests that it is a good idea to "flip" your mattress every 3 months so as to lessen the effect of sagging. He says this while standing in front of a mirror, which flips images. He had been looking into this mirror for a while before this moment and then dies by getting a triangular shard of the mirror in his neck. Seems like the Devil killed him first for a reason. By looking into the mirror he saw an entire false dichotomy, the same one that is making the people in the elevator lose their nerves and turn on each other. By instilling hate and distrust, the Devil is making it seem like the people are killing each other.

The kicker is that the elevator is a microcosm for Zion: people trapped, with no hope of escape, in a space controlled by the Devil. This microcosm can be seen in greater form in the shape of the entire building - it literally has the same shape as the elevator and when the police shut the building down and tell everyone to stay in the lobby they have just created an identical, but larger, situation as that in the elevator. One of the building's security guards goes to the basement at one point to fix something, but ends up getting shocked by a faulty cable and collapses out in the lobby. With this dead body, the lobby is now a macrocosm of the elevator.

Microcosm - a small part representing the whole.
Macrocosm - a large-scale reproduction of something small.

Put these together in a continuum and you have a fractal, a repetition of subdivisions that are identical to the main shape. In the film, this pattern is just elevator < building. However, theoretically this could continue on to: city < county < state < nation < ...etc... < Zion. The last repetition is the ultimate, though still theoretical, compartmentalized prison complex that would spread on forever and last indefinitely. It is the absolute killer of freedom with all of the inmates' identities erased and replaced with small sections of slaves toiling away for the Devil.

Devil = microcosm for (ZION) = macrocosm for Devil

With these two shapes locked together in coexistence, for they truly are one, we get the configuration whose only goal is to grow so as to contain and dominate all.

RIGHT NOW:

There is still a chance to escape the grid and fight.

IF THE DEVIL WINS:

The fences close. Reality is redefined.

Right now, the film's closing narration still applies to our real World: if Zion's forces are at work, then so are the forces of Arya. Joining the right side is each individual's choice.

We must believe that we can win.

We must not assume that we cannot lose.

Aryanism in "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" II

One of the more interesting ideas in the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is that the film is actually about a return of Zion. The 7 Days of Fire were Zion's first, but ultimately vain, attempt to seize power - it was the unrestrained viciousness and wanton destruction that led the would-be conquerors to destroy themselves too. It wasn't even a Pyrrhic victory, but an entire reset of planet Earth - once before, life emerged from the seas onto cooled volcanic rock, but now the rock was cooling from a nuclear fire storm. There were survivors here and there and after a 1000 years of civilization in this limbo, society has once again grown into a complex phenomenon with both noble and evil elements.

Society in the Valley
The small city state in the Valley of the Wind has many Aryan aspects. Due to this being but one episode from this fictional universe, many of these are just implied.

First, the Valley is a limited space and we know that in this world resources too are very limited. Thus, to be able to survive, the inhabitants must have a defined codex of frugality and growth optimization. They can be seen living their lives with relative ease, not pre-occupied with these calculations and so the codex must have been around for quite sometime, perhaps a few generations.

Frugality
Ensuring no more resources are used than required to fulfill the purpose.

If in effect, this concept also affects the processes of creation, since if the optimal amount of resources are used, then that precise amount was initially created. Nausicaa's Mehve, with its propulsion and gliding capabilities, is this very idea as seen in one perticular device. However, to keep their population going, the inhabitants in the Valley have harnessed and applied this process all around, as can be seen in the windmills that provide much of their needed energy in the "Valley of the Wind."

Aryan Settlement

For the relatively small space that the Valley spans, there is a balance between nature and polis. Due to its size, it was probably not very hard to find and this balance and keep it up. The settlement in the Valley is what the mythical hero in the prophecy will bring to all of human civilization once he or she arrives. As we saw in the film, it was Nausicaa and it is no surprise that the one prophesized hailed from this Aryan Settlement.

Secondly, “growth” does not just mean crops and manufactured goods, but also population, which also must be optimized in this society. With limited resources and space, there is no way that the settlement would be able to survive with no regulations on procreation. This is a tricky aspect in that human procreation usually creates one child, sometimes twins, but there are instances of triplets and even larger nurseries from one woman. These get rarer as they increase in number, however, they cause notable differences. In theory, a twin nursery means an increase of 100% in resource consumption from that of a single child. Resources here would be food, space, and labor of care. In a tight situation as the Valley inhabitants are in, it would absolute disaster if population growth was without oversight. This is also a key aspect of authentic National Socialism. 

Other Societies
There are two other human settlements in the film: the Kingdom of Pejite and the Torumekian Empire.

Each has managed to raise a substantial armed forces with heavy ground vehicles and large aerial transports, in addition to smaller military aircraft. Their soldiers also have armor and sophisticated armaments. Basically, the arms industry in those city states is in full swing and they clearly use it for expansionist purposes.

Now, why would they want to expand? Well, with unregulated growth and production for the sake of keeping up with that growth, wanton expansion is inevitable to keep the city state sustainable. Regulation is also inevitable, but with the route that the Pejites and Torumekians are taking, they employ “sustainability,” which is defined in Aryanism as such:

Sustainability
Ensuring resources are not exploited so quickly that they will run out.

Sustainability is, in effect, violent compensation for too much violence. In Aryanism, “violence” is lack of consent, which may or may not be physical damage. Introducing new members into society for the sake of one’s own ego is violence against the rest of the population for they now have to give up resources. It is also violence against the newly born child since it has just been forcibly injected into a finite ecosystem. Thus, by employing sustainability, the Pejites and Torumekians expand into new territories to steal others’ resources that their own children stole from them when they were born. It is a ludicrous cycle of out of control violence that will inevitable result in blowback.

Pejite is a Gentile settlement that saw

the inevitable end of Gentile activity.

The Torumekian Empire is a slightly different case. The viciousness of Zion is reborn in Kushana, Princess of Torumekia, who seeks to rule over all and exterminate those defiant of her. After the 7 Days of Fire, the ideas of Zionism were able to hide and continue developing until Aryanism took hold in the form of Nausicaa. Kushana is probably not a Jew by blood due to this being 1000 years after the end of the previous human civilization, however she certainly is packed with the same ideas and approves the same methods. She is the ultimate example in in-group altruism in the film, and it is in her that we see a profound truth: Evil is not the Jews themselves, but their ideas and methods. That is the energy of Zion and some Jews throughout history have realized just how repulsive the cult that indoctrinated them is: Benjamin Freedman, Bobby Fischer and also Jack Bernstein are examples.

Interesting fact: Kushana’s name seems to be an allusion to the real Kushan Empire that eventually saw its decline due to many things, but its last traces were eliminated with the spread of Islam. In the film, Kushana’s further exploitations are prevented by the resurgence of Aryanism and the arrival of the mythical heroine.

The Toxic Jungle
The Toxic Jungle is what Kushana condemns with so much hate and no surprise that the Fukai (as it is called in the original manga text) is actually symbolic of what she despises in civilization. First, the Jungle can be seen as representing true freedom as it grows independently of external domination. Also, it is a representation of Aryanism as it selflessly seeks to purify the pollution that the humans' own decadence and hate had smeared all over the planet. It only appears as ugly, because people refuse to see it as anything else, yet it is the ohmu who take the final step and bring in the Golden Age. Kushana can’t see past simple racist barriers and would rather settle for this again:

The Golems of Zion

Today's World
While the film shows a post-apocalyptic world, it is also applicable to today's World, as it shows that in that distant future we are liable to repeat the same disastrous mistakes that led us there in the first place. However then, with such a fragile and small civilization, it will be our final bane. A key to overcoming this is to hit the Jew where it damages his forces most: his ideas and words, which involves countering the Jewish Business Model: “they just hate us for us.” They play the victim and the World believes them, yet they are the perpetrators of crime and decadence, something that the World does not see due to the distractions the decadence provides.

We also see disasters that are really just disasters of excess. A tsunami is not really a disaster, it’s a natural process. So are earthquakes. A parking lot of cars destroyed by a tsunami, now that’s a disaster. It would have been just a natural process if that excess of cars had not been there to begin with. However, in committing violence against nature, its natural processes turn into violence against us. This is perverse and needs to stop. Our own excess is our enemy and we don’t need 7 Days of Fire as proof.

One final sidenote: Nausicaa is also the name of a character in Homer's Odyssey. After Odysseus's ship is wrecked she helps nurse him back into well-being as he recounts the events leading up to the wreck. In this film, Nausicaa helps aid civilization back to nobility. In both instances, it allows for a key journey to continue.

See Also:
Equilibrium - another post-apocalyptic tale
My Neighbor Totoro - another work by Hayao Miyazaki

Part I

Aryanism in "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" I

Some four years before he made My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki created another Aryan-themed work called, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. He put a tremendous amount of energy into this piece, as it was a completely original story with no pop-culture tie-in, and Miyazaki even crafted a manga series with the characters first. This film is an adaptation of the first two volumes. While it sacrifices much of the written works' intricacies and scope, the film version is still a great piece of storytelling. 


Sometime in the Future...
...the World's is forever changed by an event that now, 1000 years after the fact, is remembered as "The 7 Days of Fire." During the opening credits sequence we get glimpses of what when on during those days, these are quick images in a montage that seem to be resemble the memory jog of someone pondering the event. We see huge golem like figures march and unleash wanton destruction upon everything in sight. Eventually, after the chaos settles down, Earth is forever transformed with human settlements few and far apart from one another with a "Toxic Jungle" inhabited by giant insects covering the rest of the planet. Those regions are lethal for humans and can only be entered with special masks. Contact with the insects is almost completely avoided as any sort of combat results in unstoppable swarms.

The opening credits may have very well been the thoughts of one Lord Yupa, a figure similar to Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, who sees a village that has succumbed to toxicity in the very first scene. He picks up a doll whose head crumbles to dust; the doll was a child's toy and this suggests the death of Original Nobility. Has life been so violently beaten and transformed that it has lost all of its previous Nobility? The World's forest before the apocalyptic events provided Earth with oxygen, but now the jungles are toxic. This is a strong indicator of such major aberrations that they might as well be considered absolute and fundamental change. However, as we soon find out, it is a lack of hope that is the most demoralizing of illusions.

Enter a Heroine
Nausicaa is a princess in one of the few human settlements, each of these is more of a city state with government and economy, however, the Valley of the Wind is an exceptionally humble place  when compared with the others. We first see Nausicaa exploring the Toxic Jungle and finding an ohmu's (one of the huge species of insect) shell that has been shed. Knowing that this will be a valuable resource she decides to take a piece of the shell back, when she senses someone's distress. Off in the distance, someone is being chased by an ohmu and Nausicaa immediately goes to their rescue and non-violently stops the ohmu from chasing the person who is actually Lord Yupa from the opening scene.

The angry ohmu

This is a great introductory scene for the film's main heroine; she is not the stereotypical lazy aristocrat, but one committed to Aryan struggle - exploring the World and not hesitating to help someone. Note that the ohmu in this scene is blind with rage as it's home must have been disturbed accidentally by the passing Lord Yupa, but Nausicaa stuns the beast briefly with flashbangs and then soothes its anger and the bug's eyes go from bright red to a calmer blue and it makes its way back into the jungle. This scene is a total inversion from macho Lone Wolf heroics in which a muscled brute of a male takes one some beast or wrestles it away in a show of strength - here we not only have a woman but also non-violence resolving the issue; all suggesting quality of tactics and persona as opposed to quantity of strength and pure physical endurance. These themes will carry on for the rest of the film.

Also is worth noting that Lord Yupa, who has traveled far and wide in this world, still doesn't know just how Nausicaa was able to calm the ohmu. Lord Yupa unleashed the rage of the ohmu when he fired upon an insect in effort to rescue a small mammalian critter, a fox-squirrel. Yupa gives the animal to Nausicaa who is also able to calm it with some unseen force, it seems to be just her gentleness. Apparently, Nausicaa has a connection with all living things.

Enter Hope
Lord Yupa says that he is on his way to the Valley of the Wind and Nausicaa rides ahead on her glider. Interesting that her glider looks like a white wingspan and is called "Mehve" which immediately made me think of the Polish word for seagull, "mewa." As it turns out, the German word here would be "Möwe" and in the original manga written by Miyazaki, it is that word which is used for name of Nausicaa's glider. The glider is a symbol of a harmonious existence of nature and technology, of humans and animals, as well as being a fine piece of engineering - it can propel itself if need be, but usually glides so as not to waste energy.

Nausicaa flying over the Valley

Soon after Nausicaa's return, Lord Yupa rides into a valley with many windmills and green fields. Children happily rush out to greet Lord Yupa and the whole scene bears a strong resemblance to Gandalf's entrance into the Shire at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, both the scene and the scenery are parallels with similar themes being communicated, albeit transposed from the rolling hills that are typical of the English countryside to mountainous landscapes of Japan. This is the Valley of the Wind.

The Valley is one of few places not yet consumed by the ever spreading Toxic Jungle, which is also degenerating human civilization as its pores cause, among others, premature aging. It seems that the Jungle's take over is inevitable.

Here we are introduced to Obaba, a wise woman who recounts a prophecy of a mythical hero's arrival; "Clad in blue and surrounded by fields of gold to restore mankind's connection with the Earth that was destroyed. He will guide the people at last to a land of purity." The Aryan symbolism here is unmistakable. A more subtle, but also effective, way that the film communicates Aryanism, and even alludes to the Aryan race, is the fact that the characters have a rather general and undefined complexion overall. Some look Asian, but many have beards that make appear like Old Germans or Slavs. Added is that there are no mentions of real world geography, we can only assume that the film takes place on Earth, but it may as well be in the same sort of realm as Lord of the Rings - a realm of universalist applicability that has been intentionally created separate from our current world so as not to be burdened by any of its constraints.

The Struggle
That night, Nausicaa, with her heightened sense of the world, detects that something is not right. Sure enough, she's right, a large crippled ship is on a crash course with the Valley. Jumping in the Mehve, she approaches the ailing vessels and attempts to warn them not to crash into the people below. We see that the ship is being attacked by insects and is soon brought down resulting in a fireball and the toxic pores of the Jungle and insect life now threaten the Valley's agriculture. Nausicaa finds a survivor amidst the wreckage, this is a princess from another settlement, Pejite, who soon dies. This will lead to complications later. This scene also shows Nausicaa's Aryan qualities as the masses are highly impulsive and in panic about the insects, and even more so when a bigger one emerges from the downed vessel's hull. The people panic and aim to tear it up with gunfire, but Nausicaa intervenes and encourages it to leave with her unique communicability. The insect flies away with Nausicaa escorting it to the edge of the Jungle where and ohmu waits for its kin. The ohmu seems baffled as to why a human, an enemy species, did not unleash the usual rage and violence, but proceeds peacefully back into its home domain.

The next day, more ships arrive at the Valley. They land and unload soldiers who begin to secure the area, including the ailing King's quarters. Nausicaa returns from a flight when the apparent invasion is underway and rushes to her father's room only to find him surrounded by the soldiers and dead. This scene is Nausicaa's only fit of rage as she engages the soldiers with a fury, but is soon stopped by Lord Yupa. This stopped what would have been a spiral of cataclysmic violence.

The newly arrived army is from yet another state, Torumekia, and the Torumekian Princess Kushana explains that they are here to help reclaim Earth for humanity for the transport that crashed last night was carrying a developing "god-soldier" - one of the golem-like beings seen in the intro, one of the beings that caused the 7 Days of Fire 1000 years ago. However, Kushana is convinced that the golem may be used to destroy the Toxic Jungle so that the remaining humans on Earth can live without constant alarm of the pores or of the insects. Kushana decides that the best place for the golem to finish developing will be right in the Valley. She decides to take Nausicaa and some of her confidantes hostage so as to ensure the good behavior of the Valley's inhabitants.

Before they leave, Nausicaa reveals to Yupa that she had been secretly growing a garden in the basement of her building, but one with non-toxic soil. The resulting plants did not give off the lethal spores and she hoped to find a cure for the ailments humans inevitably face due to the pervading toxicity. The reverting of the garden to natural states also suggest a reversion to Original Nobility.

To the Brink of Annihilation
When they leave the Valley to head towards Torumekia, a single fighter craft attacks the Torumekian ships destroying several. Nausicaa climbs out onto roof of her own ship and her presence seems to dissuade the pilot from attacking the ship, but in his moment of hesitation his own craft is hit and goes down. Nausicaa then gets everyone off of the ship, including Kushana, and they glide down to the surface, but wind up in a swamp. Kushana does not value any act of kindness and is only driven by selfishness (she was even baffled, like the ohmu from before, when Nausicaa allowed her to escape with them from the crashing ship) draws a gun and states "I give the orders around here!" She lets her impulses get the best of her. The insects in the jungle sense anger and immediately rise up from the swamp, but Nausicaa with her communicability manages to calm them.

The insects seem to communicate with Nausicaa by some sort of glowing yellow tentacles and Nausicaa has a vision of golden field for a few moments. It's a peaceful vision. Another contrast, slightly more subtle than violent outbursts, is that Kushana regularly insults her subordinates and they her behind her back. It's another aspect of their volatility.

The previous scene also demonstrated that the air above the clouds of the jungle is clean and breathable. This is a first major indicator that there are certain things yet to be explained about the dynamics of the Toxic Jungle. Not surprisingly, it is closest to the source of the Swastika symbol that the pollution is not present.

After the ohmu leave Nausicaa goes to see if the pilot from the down fighter is still alive. Sure enough, he is and fighting with the insects, which in turn causes them to rage. This is the gentile way that inevitably leads to a spiral of violence. It is not unreasonable to believe that it was such thinking and such a course of action that lead to the 7 Days of Fire. The golems were created to wipe out all the enemies of a nation or of an alliance, but unleashed a worldwide inferno.

Nausicaa saves the pilot with her glider, but they are then pulled down into quicksand and Nausicaa has another vision. Back in her childhood, in a golden field, she had come across a baby ohmu, which was soon killed by adults. The young Nausicaa saw no reason for the violence and this is yet another suggestion that the ohmu are not what people think they are. In fact, as it turns out, peoples entire perception of the Toxic Jungle is wrong. Nausicaa and Asbel, the fighter pilot and Prince of Pejite, have been pulled down under the jungle, but are now in a clean environment. The jungle is toxic, because it is cleaning all the pollution that people had caused during the 7 Day of Fire. The insects are so protective of the jungle, because they are guarding this secret and keeping a violent species, humans, away from it. In effect, the jungle is reverting the Earth back to Original Nobility - it's a natural process if allowed to go uninterrpted - and thus, Nausicaa's attempt to control this process back home wasn't necessary. Though, she was doing it with good intention. However, Nobility cannot be "created."

In this scene, Nausicaa tells Asbel that his people are just like the Torumekians and he reacts in rage, which is a typical gentile reaction that prevents the transcending of tribal boundries. Back in the Valley, Lord Yupa discovers the Torumekian plans to unleash the golem and leaves to find Nausicaa. The villagers start an uprising then - the spiral of violence is beginning to spin. Nausicaa and Asbel reach Pejite, but it has been destroyed by the ohmu, but because they soon find out from some surviving Pejites that it was the Torumekians who lured the insects there. A deviously clever exploitation. The ohmu, when their eyes glow red, are said to be able to fight until they starve, they literally wear themselves out with their own treachery. People, it seems, are on the same track for the Pejites get the brilliant idea of now luring the insects to the Valley to conveniently wipe out all the Valley people and the rest of the Torumekians, then they will take the golem and destroy the Toxic Jungle, which they refuse to see as anything other than wretched despite Nausicaa's and Asbel's pleas. Asbel is knocked unconscious by his fellow soldiers, while Nausicaa in imprisoned on their transport. People are really on the same track as they were one millennium ago, it seems. They just want to make treachery work for them and only for them.

The leaders man be corrupt and blind with hate like the ohmu, but some of the people are not. A few noble Pejite civilians help Nausicaa sneak out so that she can find the lure being used on the ohmu swarm. While everyone prepares for some of the biggest combat to come yet, Nausicaa finds the lure, with her keeness that allowed her to spot Lord Yupa in the very beginning when he was running from the ohmu. She ends up wounded, like the baby ohmu being used for the lure as it had hooks in its body so that it could be transported. She uses her communicability to talk to it and the prisoner ohmu sees that Nausicaa is not an enemy. It heals her using its tentacle-like antennae. Then, in her last attempt to stop the ohmu horde from killing the rest of the Earth's human's Nausicaa orders the stunned Pejite soldiers to transport her in front of the charging ohmu.

The way of the Aryan

The way of the Jew

Meanwhile, Kushana unleashes the unfinished golem and it manages to fire off some terrifying laser blasts before completely falling apart. Her dreams of cataclysmic victory instantly shatter and crumble to hopelessness. The charging ohmu cannot be stopped by anything at her disposal now.

Nausicaa is set down right before the ohmu charge and it plows right into her, sending her high up into the air and back down into the midst of charging insect feet and kicked up dust.

For a few terrifying moments everyone prepares for mutually assured destruction, but then, inexplicably, the ohmu then stop... from high up in the air we see the raging red glowing of the swarm's eyes starts to turn into a calm blue from one spot that soon spreads throughout the entire giant multitude of ohmu. They lift Nausicaa on their glowing yellow antennae, whose clothes are now blue (from the blood of the wounded ohmu) and she appears to be walking in a golden field - Nausicaa is the mythical hero that found the link between humanity and nature so as to herald in a new Golden Age. She is the embodiment of the symbolism of the Swastika.

Arya Returns

Part II