The Crystal of Truth: An Archetypical Analysis of The Dark Crystal

Ever seen a little film by Jim Henson and Frank Oz called The Dark Crystal? It is a fantasy film, entirely done with puppets and practical effects. It is really a visual masterpiece and a huge triumph for puppetry and practical effects.  

You really ought to go watch it before reading on. Trust me its good. The following will contain spoilers. 

Have you seen it, now? Yes? Good.  

To recap, the story revolves around Jen who is thrown into a world out of balance, the world of Thra. The Dark Crystal, an artifact that is directly connected to the wellbeing of the world, has been fractured, creating two new races: the vile Skeksis and the peaceful Mystics.  

Prophesy holds that a Gelfling, one of the other races of Thra, will end the tyranny of the Skeksis, so the Skeksis have annihilated every Gelfling in fear of the prophecy. Jens is suspected to be the last Gelfling in existence, raised by the Mystics to one day fulfill the prophecy, repair the Dark Crystal, and restore the world of Thra.  

Jen goes on to find the missing shard of the crystal, meet a female Gelfling, Kira, and arrive with her at the Castle of the Crystal. The two manage to make their way to the Chamber of the Crystal as the Skeksis arrive to perform a ritual to attain immortality. The Mystics have also been traveling all this time, and they arrive as this ritual is about to begin.  With both the Skeksis and the Mystics in the same room, Jen shoves the shard into the Crystal.   

As the crystal is made whole, the Skeksis and the Mystics are rejoined into True Crystal Beings. They reveal that their race was split in two when they shattered the Crystal. Now that the Crystal has been made whole it has become the Crystal of Truth. The True Crystal Beings ascend, leaving the two Gelflings with a charge: "We leave you with the Crystal of Truth. Shape your world in its light." 

Restoring the Balance 

This film tells an archetypical story, meaning that it uses images and ideas which are held in humanity's racial memory. These images or archetypes speak of holding the individual and world in a balance between order and chaos, male and female. Our ancient stories have long been occupied with characters achieving this balance and restoring this balance to their world. The Dark Crystal follows in this tradition. 

The Order and Masculinity of the Skeksis 

The Skeksis are the villains of this film. They represent everything awful about order and masculinity because they are these things taken to an extreme. The Skeksis are oppressive. They take creatures that are weaker than them, devour their life essence to prolong their own wretched lives, and then enslave these poor hollow creatures to serve their pleasure. They relentlessly compete with each other for power and are easily disgusted even though they are revolting.  

You can easily see how these things are order at its worst. They are tyrannical, exploitative, and caught up in their endless decadent rituals and ceremonies. Their fierce competitiveness and boisterousness is evidently all that is terrible about masculinity. 

The Chaos and Femininity of the Mystics 

The Mystics are usually seen as good guys in the film, but the movie lets on a few things about them that ought to give us pause. They do not fight against the Skeksis in any way except for saving a single Gelfling: Jen, the protagonist. They are slothful. For example, Jen's teacher, the oldest of the mystics is tasked with preparing him for his destiny, reading the Gelfling boy to fulfill the prophecy, but the mystic hardly gets around to telling Jen about the prophecy until the moment of his death.   

They are also quite feminine. They are designed with long white hair that makes them look like grandmothers. The Mystics are said to be natural wizards. In an archetypical sense, the natural world has feminine associations. Jen’s old mystic Master truly cares for and nurtures Jen, but he is overly protective of the boy, shielding the Gelfling from the reality of his prophetic duty. In this, the Mystics embody the nurturing feminine taken to a pathological extreme, sheltering Jen, making him weak to face the trials ahead.  

They are the other extreme of directionless and impotence, embodying the worst of chaos and femininity. 

Jen and Kira: Towards Balance 

If we can identify the Skeksis and the Mystics as the worst of order and chaos, male and female, Jen and Kira make sense. Jen meets Kira in the forest where she acts more like a natural wizard than Jen. Kira is able to speak to and command beasts. She knows her way around the forest. Jen, on the other hand, knows how to read, a skill we would think of as being civilized, and he is willing to push forward while Kira becomes afraid.  

Jen is orderly and masculine while Kira is chaotic and feminine. They each represent good attributes of these concepts. It is only together that they are able to complete the quest to the Dark Crystal. 

The issue with the Skeksis and the Mystics is that they are both out of balance. One cannot be whole without the other. So, when Kira and Jen work together, unifying male and female, the Skeksis and the Mystics are brought back to balance, fusing together into their original states. 

The union of the masculine and feminine, order and chaos, that brings balance to the world, restoring the purity of the Crystal of Truth. It is no wonder that at the end, the True Crystal Being says, "Hold onto her for she is a part of you as we are all a part of each other." This is the way to freedom from the "arrogance and delusion" that caused the sundering of the crystal in the first place. It is the union of extremes, balancing each other, that will bring us salvation from the wasteland. 

It is here, at this place of balance, that we might find the Truth. 

Let us shape our world in its light.