A Tale of Two Alchemists, II: The Brotherhood of Everything
“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. We put all our trust in alchemy, but in the end…what is it?” In the episode “Rain of Sorrows” in FMA:B, Edward Elric shows himself to be a very different man than his FMA incarnation. Lost in regret rather than horrified denial, he confesses his doubts about alchemy, the Potteresque science/magic at the center of his world. “Alchemy,” he says, “is the science of understanding the flow of matter and its laws. The process of comprehension, deconstruction, and reconstruction. The world flows too. It must also follow laws.”
Alchemy is reliable knowledge. Alchemy is science-based power. But deep down, Edward’s alchemy was actually a quest for the scientifically impossible. Under the rain, he confesses his immaturity, his foolishness, his contradictions. Ed, whose core ideology at this point is scientific humanism and rebellious atheism, is conflicted. He wants to put all his hopes in science-guided humanitarianism, but he loves his little brother and keeps going against the “flow of the world,” hoping for a miracle.
Last month, I explained how FMA’s alchemy is a perfect stand-in for the scientific revolution, highlighting the contradictions at its very foundations and how its deconstruction creates a point of contact between the franchise and Christianity. This paradox is the tragedy at the heart of FMA (2003), but I contend that it becomes a sign of hope in 2012’s FMA:B. What is the difference between the two versions, you ask? Wait for it: brotherhood!
Okay, okay, I’ll go deeper: spoilers ahead!
Like FMA, FMA:B tells us that the humanist project is walking on thin ice, just as Edward is. Questions keep piling up. Why do brilliant scientists like Marcoh or Tucker suddenly devour their own and create monsters, chasing the impossible like warlocks? Why does the political enterprise of sober, incremental knowledge and well-being become mass manipulation and mass destruction? Odd, that.
Even more, why are there embodied deadly sins walking around this Dieselpunk world? Who is their “Father”? Why do religious-sounding concepts and behaviors appear at the very core of this supposedly atheistic venture? These are neither abnormalities nor remains of the past. Both versions of FMA gradually present to us a simple (if devastating) answer: the humanist project is fighting human nature. And deep down, nature prevails.
What humanism deems rational and what it deems irrational are, in truth, deeply intertwined. The hidden heart of the industrial Amestris—connected to everything by iron veins—and its strange inhabitants illustrate how the “ultimate realities” keep their power over us, even if we decide that there are no such things. The sacrificial logic, the thirst for the divine—for miracles, redemption, or eternal life—doesn’t disappear under humanism. It just mutates.
The name “Amestris” is a clue. Amestris was the queen of Xerxes I of Persia, the King of Kings who was defeated by the forefathers of Western Civilization, the Greeks. In old age, Herodotus says, she “buried twice seven sons of notable Persians as an offering on her own behalf to the fabled god beneath the earth.” That is, she carried out human sacrifice underground. And “Xerxes,” in FMA lore, is a kingdom of old, erased in one night while searching for eternal life.
“Amestris” thinks of itself as the political arm of a scientific revolution extending itself to all peoples, discovering the rights of all, procuring peace, and sharing the blessings of liberty through its enlightened managerial class. But in reality, it is an enormous, self-sustaining power machine that conceals a pagan quest. Deep down, Amestris is attempting to build the Kingdom of God on Earth, only without God.
Amestris dresses up submission to its power projects as “civilization” and “liberty.” It eradicates what it thinks of as unrighteousness in the name of overcoming “ignorance” and “prejudice.” It sacrifices the Ishvalans and the Liorans to increase its sacred power, on the grounds that it will create a new, better humanity. By likening it to a sacrificial pagan empire, FMA implicitly questions the self-portrayal of the modern West.
Let’s examine the mirror image of the story of Edward, the conflicted Amestrian humanist: the story of Scar, the hunter of alchemists. Scar is a religious man who seeks to aid divine punishment, avenging the genocide of Ishval and the death of his brother, which was caused by Amestrian state alchemists. Whereas Father Cornello was a hoaxer, Scar is sincere. He believes that the teachings of the One God, Ishvala, are the true way of the world. But he, too, is conflicted.
Ishval’s main inspirations are Israel, Iraq, and the Ainu, but the Ishvalan religion includes an amalgam of symbols of monotheism. Scar wears crosses, Ishvalan women wear hijabs, the Ishvalan monks look Buddhist, and all remember Ishval, their Promised Land. When the genocide of the Ishvalans begins, their Grand Cleric, who hid to preserve the “structure of faith” (like the Japanese Christians, incidentally), comes back to offer his life to King Bradley of Amestris, hoping to end the slaughter.
“How arrogant of you,” Bradley responds. “Do you sincerely believe that your single life is equivalent to the remaining multitude of your followers? Your stature has gone to your head. The life of any individual human is only worth one life. That’s all. Nothing more, and nothing less. Your life is not enough to call off the extermination.” The Ishvalans, aghast, call him out, reminding him of the wrath of God. He scoffs.
“God, you say? Now this is intriguing. How much longer do you think your ‘God’ plans to wait before unleashing His fury? Just how many thousands of lives must I take before He decides to strike me down? […] Open your eyes! God is nothing more than a construct created by man to inspire fear and promote order. If you wish to see me struck down for all these atrocities, use your own hands to do so, not God’s!”
Bradley’s impious words describe the deep motives of Scar: if God doesn’t strike down the alchemists, he, Scar, will do it using God’s name and the alchemists’ methods. He will make them taste their own medicine. Though he remains externally religious, Scar defies what he knows to be the teachings of Ishvala. His conduct implies a practical atheism that, deep down, is becoming more and more similar to the hidden Amestrian religion of “existential technology.”
And what is that hidden religion? Edward’s discourse to Rose (see the previous post) is mirrored here as the justification of mass murder. Amestris’s ideology is indeed a man-made vehicle for power that Bradley sacrifices entire nations to. Beneath the disguise of an enlightened, scientific bureaucrat, Bradley is also the Wrath of a pseudo-God in the making, passing judgment on the sinners opposed to his religion of power and “existential technology”: the obstacles, the stupid, the weak.
Amestris here is a more sophisticated Kingdom of Xerxes. What if the West, in turn, is a sophisticated Persia, a barbaric pagan empire? If humanitarian morality and scientific practices disguise a nonscientific worldview, then hidden idolatries, rites, and sacrifices performed in the hope of tipping the scales of reality are at play ingrained in our hearts, that is, in the hearts of humanists and in those under their care—or is it power?
What if knowledge is power, and subject to some “irrational” logic of power? All scientists would then truly be soldiers, every alchemist a “dog of the army.” What if their social status is a construct made by the disguised religion of power? Does this story sound familiar? If, in practice, humanists act like their enemies—if they adore, sacrifice, and try to tame reality itself—then the project is compromised. FMA (2003) responds: “We’ll keep trying nevertheless.”
But FMA:B, offers a different response. It asks: “What if the ‘irrational’ isn’t so irrational? What if it has its own goodness?” And in answer to this question, it gives us a counterpoint to “existential technology”: an “existential brotherhood,” a logic of alliance and love, exemplified by May Chang’s “alkahestry.”
Alkahestry is the alchemy from the country of Xing, preached to its emperors by the “Philosopher of the West” and based on purification and healing. Its source is not human life through an equivalent exchange, as with Amestrian alchemy, but the “Pulse of the Dragon”: an energy flowing from the top of the tallest mountains to the earth, as blood runs to the heart. Instead of the Philosopher’s Stone, it seeks the Elixir of Life.
Xing is no paradise, but its emperor understands that a ruler is nothing without his people. He longs for a self-sacrificing alliance and the power to protect others. Alkahestry is also (in this version) the great discovery of Scar’s brother, who sacrifices himself for Scar. It is an alchemy that is not powered by taking life, and therefore it is not forbidden by Ishvala.
A great convergence is beginning to take place, and Amestris takes its place side by side with Xing and Ishval. When Mustang and Hughes see the horrors of their regime, they start planning an Amestris where the powerful will take care of the weak. Mustang exemplifies this with his soldiers, and General Armstrong with the troops of Briggs. This sacrificial, familial principle is also the one that Ed and Al embody, the one at the heart of the story.
Alkahestry is the antithesis of the alchemy of scientific humanism. It represents a deep alliance with the cosmos and with the people of all nations, and allies itself with Ishval’s monotheism. It includes a self-sacrificial principle, a fraternal view of others, an openness to the wisdom of nature and, specifically, to fatherhood. And, most of all, it reveals a principle of love beyond even equivalent exchange. Alkahestry, thus, contains the only thing that can solve the existential paradox.
In FMA (2003), the moment the Elrics pray for a baby about to be born may be one of vulnerability and clouded judgment. In FMA:B, instead, their prayer anticipates the final fight between alkahestry and alchemy. So does the moment when Edward, his arms forming a cross, stands between Scar and Winry, reminding the Ishvalan of his brother.
We have two powers, two loves, and two inner sacrifices that resonate in the deepest parts of our nature. They are the sacrifice of the world for the sake of the self, and of the self for the sake of the world. Bradley and the Great Cleric represent two paths of the heart, and also two paths for the nations, and so do many other figures in the story, including the final antagonist, the homunculus who calls himself “Father.”
St. Augustine describes this duality in City of God, book fourteen, chapter twenty-eight: “Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; and the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of our conscience.”
The “glory from men” is imitation: the heart covets what the eye sees, and thus the one-eyed homunculus coveted the body of Hohenheim, the throne of the King, and ultimately the power of God. The endgame of “Father” is to “eat God,” to contain Him in himself. He ultimately cannot. But the glory from God is participation, the acceptance of a love that connects everything. It is connection to the universal, beating heart of all reality. It is Alkahestry.
Deep down, we also have the thirst of “Father,” and that’s why Christ himself decided to become food for us—not so that we might contain Him, but so that we might experience communion with Him and everyone: Christ’s brotherhood, but also His sonship, which entails receiving God in obedience and love, as opposed to imitating and attempting to steal His likeness.
This interior fight pervades the story. It is why “Father,” the homunculus who built Amestris, and the Elric’s true father, the Philosopher of the West, look alike. And why in the final battle with Edward, “Father” turns into a young man, an alternate Ed. In accepting his father, sacrificing himself for his brother and friends, and renouncing alchemy, Edward connects to his true identity as a dependent human instead of attempting to be godly and self-made like the homunculus.
As it turns out, that is the path of life, while the homunculus is destroyed instead by his evil deeds.
Alphonse continues his investigation. Mustang governs a new Amestris. This tells us that it is not science or political power that we are called to renounce: Christ’s message didn’t destroy the pagans—it converted them. It is only the adoration of these things and the human sacrifices to them that must go. Wrath, Envy, Lust, Sloth, Greed, and “Father” are defeated by their own contradictions, by the very inhumanity that made them fearsome.
It is thus that Edward is prepared for his final lesson. When he proposes marriage to Winry—using alchemic equivalent exchange as a metaphor, half a life for half a life—she rebukes him: she will give all, and receive all from him in turn. So, what is there beyond existential technology and its discontents? Wholehearted, sacrificial love in the brotherhood of all, open to the whole cosmos, encompassing sonship, marriage, brotherhood, political friendship, and openness to all nations.
Triumph and failure in FMA:B are measured by the acceptance of a deeper alliance, a principle of love that purifies and cleanses. In their world as in ours, this is the source of the brotherhood of all: of human and nature, of human and human, of human and angel, and of human and God. This is the deep desire ingrained in the human heart, one that might prevail over its darker idolatries. It is a “true way of the world” that a child can grasp: life-giving love, bringing true miracles.
Ultimately, we Christians also believe that our Father, God, gave us Jesus as a sacrificial elder Brother. He came into an idolatrous, sinful world to give us healing, brotherhood, and salvation in his Church, his younger brothers and sisters of all nations. He gave us our own alkahestry. He even gave a way back to those who had forgotten Him with their actions while yet preaching His name—those like Scar. He gave us a truer life.
So what would I tell Ed if I could meet him in “Rain of Sorrows”? I would tell him about St. John Paul II’s Catechism and two of its points that make me think of him. The first is paragraph 2293, which explains how science and technology, even if they are precious resources for humanity, cannot by themselves disclose the meaning of our existence, or even tell us what counts as true human progress. They are precious tools but tyrannical masters.
Many put all their trust in science and technology, but in the end, what are these? Only our knowledge and our efforts. We’re their measure. But we’re not the measure of everything, and we do not control what is true and false, meaningful and meaningless, good and evil. If we use science and technology to seek that control, we will become monstrous, even if we choose to call that “progress.” Our human nature is our strength, but it is also our limit.
And what about God? Isn’t there a conflict between faith and science, between God and Edward? Ultimately, no. God is not our rival, He’s our Father. The quest of understanding and loving the world (and Him) is the quest God gave to the first man.
And so I would also tell Ed about paragraph 159, titled “Faith and science,” which says, “Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.”
True science, methodical research in whatever branch of knowledge, archeology or astrophysics, engineering, biology or psychology—provided it is carried out in a rigorous manner and not used for evil—can never conflict the truths of the faith, which come from the same God. “The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”
Mark the “in spite of himself” part. That’s you, Ed. One day, after the long journey, your mother will come back to life, and you and Al will find healing. Science is real, but hope is too: life-giving Love is the one true way of the world.
