Running that Lemonade Stand Again | Let's Play Genshin Impact

Hi guys I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!

It looks like miHoYo did decide to give us a little hint about the story even in this patch's totally filler event, Alchemical Ascension. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A long time ago I looked into real world alchemy because I thought it might be related to Genshin's version. It turns out it's very hard to achieve the ultimate goal of alchemy, the Magnum Opus. So back then I proposed that Albedo would get it wrong. The four steps of the Magnum Opus are Nigredo

Albedo

(or Chalk which is what Calx means )

Citrinitas

and finally Rubedo.

However those last two are tricky on account of how nobody has actually achieved either of them for obvious reasons. (Notice how it's Rubedo Imminent and Citrinitas Simulated.) It's very easy to burn stuff and it's very easy to create chalk. But turning that chalk into any kind of precious metal is just not gonna happen.

But it is still powerful stuff in Genshin so what could be the consequences of an attempt at the Magnum Opus gone wrong?

Actually the only reason I even looked into real world alchemy was because I found something while looking at another character, Fischl. In the book Flowers for Princess Fischl there's a bunch of notes from the author and one of them was a very odd term for English speakers: Gesamtkunstwerk. Color me surprised when I looked it up and found out it's technically a word in English, an accepted loanword from its original German. (like debut from French or ninja from Japanese) It means a perfect work of art. Guess what Magnum Opus means. However in the story the Gesamtkunstwerk is a monster, something for the heroine to fight. I think that's the consequence and Albedo thought so too.

In the recent event we were given four exams to test our proficiency in potion making. These tests as explained by Sucrose were created by Albedo and notice the stars in those images above. He flipped the order of Citrinitas and Rubedo, considering Citrinitas as the final step. Oops.

In real world alchemy sometimes people did actually believe that Citrinitas was the final step. After all the point was to create gold and gold is yellow right? This is actually one of the pitfalls and has been used as an excuse for why nobody ever got it done. Looking into it it becomes clear that Rubedo is that final step, the perfecting of the enriched Albedo (Citrinitas) into the philosopher's stone which as all Harry Potter fans know is red. Gold itself is not quite yellow and as it turns out was considered "red" by alchemists.

This real world misunderstanding was also brought over to Genshin. Late into the Narzissenkreuz World Quest we descend from the top a tower and can interact with a very unassuming note.

Rubedo is the correct final step. But actually looking back at this it told us even more. Albedo learned all of his alchemy from his master and creator, Rhinedottir who is from Khaenri'ah. It seems Rene long suspected that Khaenri'ahns got the formula wrong. But unlike Albedo and Rhinedottir, it's our MC that saw these notes meaning this future mistake and the threat of the Gesamtkunstwerk is still very much in play. Short of Albedo explaining what the Magnum Opus is our MC won't know to warn him that he's got it wrong. That's something else we can gather from this event. The MC doesn't really know what they read back in the tower because they're not alchemists or researchers. And they probably won't know until it becomes clear that the big monster that Albedo transformed into came from his alchemy research which fixated on yellow not red.

Pretty cool we can learn this much from such a tiny inclusion into a filler event, isn't it?

But there's actually another part to this. While Rene gave us this major clue into Albedo, Khaenri'ah and Khemia many Genshin Theorists have also latched onto something else he was looking into: The Chymical Marriage. Most of these theories end up bringing up our MC twins. The thing is the Chemical Marriage is actually about alchemy. So let me explain.

According to many of these theories there's a pattern of "chymical marriages" happening across Teyvat's history which will ultimately lead up to the union of the MC siblings into the perfect form or rebis. Now Rebis itself is another way of portraying Rubedo and is also considered the end product of the Magnum Opus. Rebis given by another name is the Hermaphrodite which hilariously enough I actually brought up before as just a funny anecdote and yet it will help me explain my perspective here. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Going back to these theories, here are some of the examples of chymical marriages that have already happened before: The ancestor of the seelie and a traveler from afar, Nabu and Deshret, Liloupar and Ormazd, Haagenti and Morax, finally Lyris and Rene. Ok let's just go off of this list. If the chymical marriage is reflected by all of these examples what can we immediately conclude? They were all failures. The Seelie Ancestor and traveler were met with resistance to the point of tearing Teyvat apart and resulting in both of them being separated and wiped of their memories. Bad Ending. Nabu and Deshret? Nabu vanished without a trace and then Deshret went crazy trying to bring her back before going crazier and trying to freeze time into unchanging eternity. Bad Ending. Liloupar and Ormazd? Where's Gurabad today? Bad Ending. Lyris and Rene. So Rene turned himself into sludge and then Jakob combined sludge with other stuff to make the freaky black Tulpa that we have to beat up and bring Rene back to his senses whereby not long afterwards he dies. Bad Ending. Haagenti and Morax probably have the best outcome. She dies possibly corrupted by something and Morax is the only survivor. He's the only survivor of tons of stuff.

Side Note 1: Also while it's been made pretty clear by the World Quest Series itself some of these theories have concluded that Master Narzissenkreuz was a success. How? Also I don't think it qualifies as a chymical marriage anyway because well Lyris didn't merge with Rene at all. She was just the catalyst for Rene to merge with the other Ordo members. And that failed spectacularly so Jakob had to then fuse him with a cocktail of what was left of Carter and then Alain's pocketwatch. Lyris herself became intertwined with Mary-Ann. Not exactly a union of a Red King and White Queen is it? Also Lyris was the Red Queen. Yeah the formula is pretty specific. Red King and White Queen. You can't just mix and match and there's a reason for that.

Side Note 2: The real chymical marriage was meant to combine the masculine "sun" with the feminine "moon" and while that doesn't sound sensible, the Babylonian classical planets were related by alchemists to alchemical elements as well with the sun representing gold and the moon being silver. In this interpretation gold and silver were facilitated by quicksilver or Mercury as the next classical planet. (Saturn is last and represented by lead.) Of course gold itself also represents rubedo right? This version of the marriage creates the rebis philosopher's stone instead. For gold we turn to Jabir ibn Hayyan and a reaction between the Red King of sulfur and now the White Queen is that quicksilver. In this interpretation quicksilver is a formless substance, useless on its own. Sulfur is one of the most reactive elements, readily oxidizing metals so it is meant to motivate the quicksilver into becoming a worthy metal like gold. In this interpretation salt facilitates their reaction. There's a reason I'm bringing up these two specific interpretations btw but we'll get to that later.

Ok so failures on all counts. But let's just continue on this track. Ultimately the true chymical marriage we need is of Aether and Lumine. Now not every theory justifies it this way but some of them suggest that it's first of all not ick (Don't incest guys. Just dont.) but also that the rebis to come out of them isn't unprecedented. In fact this is how they become a true Descender as the theories compare to Phanes who is described as androgynous. Ok so first problem. Phanes is a singular entity that's androgynous. Why is our MC who is already known to be a Descender only half of the formula and why has there never been any mention of any other Descenders requiring this merger into a rebis? Second problem-

How monstrous!

Now we go back to what I was saying before about Hermaphrodite. I don't think it's a secret that ancient Teyvat was based on Greco-Roman culture and well they didn't like androgyny. Before the actual Hermaphroditus son of Hermes and Aphrodite, there was an actual hermaphroditic being called Agdistis an abomination created by Zeus and Cybele. (see Kory Drums to know how she relates to Genshin) The other gods abhorred this creature and killed it through castration. So it's not likely that a hermaphroditic being would work in the context of Teyvat.

Now what does this all mean? Well it's something I've been saying for years. It's very difficult to get this right. Several others have already gotten it wrong. It's up to us, the MC, to finally figure it out.

And actually if we go back to the incest side of things I brought that up myself too. See there's another more Gnostic side to the theory that I have yet to see anybody bring up. The Descenders are partly inspired from the Gnostic Aeons. Aeons are formed in opposing pairs, the dyad. A perfect tie-in for Aether and Lumine would have been the Aeon Sophia or rather her fallen self the Achamoth and her intended dyad pair, Jesus. Yes Jesus.

And yet that's actually wrong too.

The idea of Sophia Achamoth being Lumine came from early interpretations of the Gnostic Chorus. Basically Lumine was meant to be the first heir deceived into becoming queen of the Kingdom of Darkness and so Aether who came after her is the second heir. But as I said back in that old video I think that'll be a red herring and we know miHoYo loves their red herrings.

Actually there was another Chymical Marriage Theory that made a point about how the MCs were interchangeable. From a gameplay perspective that's obvious. You can pick either sibling and the other one sides with the Abyss Order. However while this was used to justify the idea of them joining together as the rebis there's another way to look at it that ties into Gnosticism much better. Gnosticism is about the journey. This is based on it taking inspiration itself from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism which are religions focused on personal journeys towards enlightenment. In this way the twins represent different experiences and further illustrate how easy it is to fall off the right track. Say it with me now, "it's very hard to get it right."

So with that in mind what might be the real story? If we go back to the Aeons thing, the Jesus Aeon isn't your typical Aeon. Aeons are normally formed in dyad pairs but remember that Sophia fell and became the Achamoth. Her fall was caused by her rejecting her dyad and so Jesus became her pair later on. As a result the Jesus Aeon wasn't created in the normal way. Instead all of the other Aeons provided their best attributes to collectively create it.

Everybody coming together to create the one that'll fix things. We've actually seen that a few times now. Remember this?

or this?

The purpose of Aether isn't to unite with Lumine into some kind of androgynous rebis. It's to reach gnosis himself where his sibling failed before him. Then through his enlightenment bring enlightenment to everyone else.

Side Note: There's one little additional detail I've noticed in many of these theories. There's this idea that the Taoist Yin Yang means that people embody either yin or yang and therefore marriage completes them. "You're the yin to my yang." That's not how it works. Every single person has both yin and yang inside of them. It's the possible imbalances that therefore require a person to find others to cover for their shortcomings and then people balance each other out. But the point is to individually reach that balance, your inner balance. Notice how Chongyun is pure yang and that's a bad thing? So Lumine isn't the yin to Aether's yang. If anything they both have the exact same composition of yin and yang and while Paimon and everybody we've met along our journey has balanced our MC, the sibling sided with the Abyss Order and is very off balance.

Speaking of misinterpretations and red herrings a while ago I brought up how Erinnyes may not actually be a real historical character. This was likely done on purpose by miHoYo to illustrate the point that not everything we are told about in-game needs to be correct or related to the real lore. (The earliest sign of this is Dainsleif who used to be taken at his word from the Travail trailer. Then we got the We Will Be Reunited Quest and it became very obvious that Dainsleif is an unreliable narrator with a strong bias against gods.) As it relates here most of the information that went into these theories came from Rene's research. Along with the chymical marriage, other terms stemming from this research are "circular ruins" and "forest in the mirror." Just like I pointed out how La Chanson d'Erinnyes references old French epic poetry and that it itself was a work of fiction modeled off them, The Circular Ruins is a short story and "forest in the mirror" is a reference to Alice in Wonderland which is also referenced again by Rene when he brings up Lyris the "Red Queen." Even the name Narzissenkreuz is referencing Christian Rosenkreutz a character from a fictional allegory about the chymical marriage. Allegory isn't new to Genshin either but what was it that we're meant to do with allegory? It's only a representation of the actual truth, warped enough that it can fool Irminsul in the event the truth is erased. In other words we're not meant to look at this stuff at face value.

Side Note 1: I don't like leaving things on a downer so here's something from all of these theories that may lead somewhere. As we go through the quest Caterpillar and Jakob bring up the "Circle of Four Orthants." These orthants are

In Gnosticism:

Thus Jesus consists of four disjointed natures: spirit, soul, body, and a higher aeonic nature.

It doesn't seem one-to-one but humans according to Gnosticism also possess three of these qualities: spirit, soul and body. The one that's missing would be that higher aeonic nature aka the pneumatic quality of enlightened humans like the allogenes or likely the Persona Orthant. So again, "Jesus" or our MC will get to this point and then uplift the rest of Teyvat.

Also another name for Gnostic Jesus is Logos so maybe there is something to the Artifact Pieces theories. One head with four additional pieces like a Descender and its four shining shades. Logos or reason is supposed to be the fusion of the four orthants after all.

And the examples of actual chymical marriages? Gold-Silver-Mercury and Sulfur-Mercury-Salt are the spirit, soul and body respectively.

Side Note 2: And so then there's that Mercury part. Well Mercury is the Roman version of Hermes and another product of the chymical marriage is the filius philosophorum or philosopher's child and one version of this is Hermes himself sometimes the Hermes Trismegistus. I'd say she's done a great job of facilitating, wouldn't you?

To summarize:

• It looks like miHoYo's hinting more and more about where Albedo's story is going.
• Albedo believes that Citrinitas is the final step in alchemy but as we learned from Rene, Citrinitas or yellow is "simply bait." Red or Rubedo is the goal.
• Rene also noticed that Khaenri'ah itself had the wrong idea about the Magnum Opus which could factor into the information we'll need to learn about it as we head into the Khaenri'ah section of the game.
• The Chymical Marriage has been theorized to have happened already but each example so far has been a failure.
• These theories sometimes claim that a Descender is androgynous and therefore the twin Travelers are meant to complete a Chymical Marriage to achieve that Descender androgyny. However only Phanes is ever described as androgynous and with a unified human civilization based on an androgynophobic Greco-Roman culture it's not likely androgyny is a necessary characteristic.
• The point of all this is that "gnosis" is difficult to achieve. Getting to the real story of Genshin was made difficult by miHoYo to illustrate this.
• Another erroneous interpretation is the Aeon dyad being represented by Aether and Lumine, opposing pairs of Aeons which create through union and could be interpreted as a Chymical Marriage.
• Instead, that Aether and Lumine are twins to this extent is a way to illustrate the Gnostic Path.
• Interpret it this way and the sibling represents how easy it is to fail while our MC will succeed.
• After the MC achieves gnosis they will then uplift everybody else on Teyvat.
• Rene's Chymical Marriage is actually one of several terms that are based on fictional sources similar to La Chanson d'Erinnyes which is based on chanson poetry.

I'd say the main takeaway from all of this is just that it's going to take plenty of research to really figure out the truth and that that's by design with this game as shown by Albedo in the first section. So let's keep digging!

Topic originally created on April 7th, 2024.