Song Lyrics in FFXIV: Compilation, Discussion, and Interpretation

[Mysteltain]

Damn, Rocl, you certainly put in some work with Rise! I'll try to get something written up for A11 and more for A12 to compare with yours.

So, after going through everyone's interpretations this is the current set of lyrics for the song. I'll update the first post with this set, although feel free to post any corrections you think it may need. Personally, I'm not really feeling that "An eminent form..." is correct, but the swell in the music makes it difficult to make out.

Chains of harmony...

The song of the shifting sea,
The kiss of the salt-sweet breeze,
The warmth of her silken dress,
Stained in red...

Her memory, fading fast,
Her mother sits, eyes downcast.
An eminent form in hand,
Farewells unsaid...

Now once a certainty, lost in grief.
A daughter's desperate cries, unheard pleas.
Forsaken ancient rite, on her knees.
A prayer passes from her lips,
Into her soul the Goddess whispers:

“A heartbeat without harmony
is rhythm without time.
The heart seeketh equilibrium;
With balance, fill your world with calm.
So sing this broken melody,
Let balance shelter thee.
One must start believing:
An empty heart divides the sea
An empty heart divides the sea.”

Chains of harmony...

Surprisingly, I feel that the last verse is the least interesting of the entire song. The story about the daughter and her mother I find to be much more interesting because the lyrics, quite vividly, paint a picture of them. Was it the daughter who summoned Sophia, and if so, what became of her mother? In the fight, Sophia refers to the head as her daughter, and the statue of Sophia that Goldsmiths can craft also says:

A statuette depicting the Meracydian goddess, Sophia. (Barbelo statuette suspiciously missing.)

Upon doing a tiny bit of research, Barbelo is an emanation of God in the Gnostic view of the universe, specifically the first female emanation and therefore the closest to perfection (ie. God). Looking a bit further into Gnosticism, at least in the context of what pertains to Sophia's fight, Demiurges are the artisans and maintainers of the physical universe. Those titles given to her adds make sense, as they are her soldiers who would maintain her perfect society, as even though she is their Goddess she exists in the spiritual world, wholly separate from the material/physical world. While a bit on-the-nose as far as their roles in this Meracydian society, it does keep the theme going.

So, what does this mean for who the mother and daughter figures are in the song? Well, it's a bit of a toss-up. Was the daughter the first person to summon Sophia during the Allagan invasion, and she somehow became a part of the primal afterwards? Or did the daughter pull a sort of Shiva-type of summoning, where her mother took the form of Sophia, and then she became the head floating beneath her (the daughter's name being Barbelo)? I may be overthinking this, but it seems that there's much more going on behind-the-scenes with Sophia than quite a few of the other Primals and Eikons we have in the game.

(Not on the same topic, but here's my guess at A11's lyrics):

Exponential Entropy
Forward and back,
And then forward and back,
And then go forward and back,
Ever one foot forward!

Transcendental!
I...un...leash...the...
Exponential!
En...tro...py..!

Forward and back,
And then forward and back,
And then go forward and back,
Ever one foot forward!

Run out of time! (Begin ignition!)
Run out of time! (Lead a new nation!)
Run out of time! (Triangulation!)
Time out of time!(No destination!)

Run out of time! (Begin ignition!)
Run out of time! (Lead a new nation!)
Run out of time! (Predestination!)
Time out of time! (No destination!)

Falling back right into the system of
Falling back on all that's erased
When fighting back right out of this system
Means falling back right into this space.

Yes, falling back right in with the system
Who'll see you falling back to the end
When falling back is better than simply
Falling back into pieces again!

[gcastiel]

So, after going through everyone's interpretations this is the current set of lyrics for the song. I'll update the first post with this set, although feel free to post any corrections you think it may need. Personally, I'm not really feeling that "An eminent form..." is correct, but the swell in the music makes it difficult to make out.

Hey guys I wanna add my two cents for the sophia lyrics.

"An eminent form in hand"
From what i hear is "A tormented form in hand."

For "Forsaken ancient rite, on her knees" I'm hearing "Forsake an ancient trade, on her knees."

And finally, the one that made me write the post....
"So sing this broken melody
let balance shelter thee.
One must start believing"
Okay i hear many different things for these three lines but this set makes the most sense. The one i will argue about is the final line here though. I can clearly hear "One last step on" and what sounds like "With you."

[MajikNET]

Back to Sophia...

Was the daughter the first person to summon Sophia during the Allagan invasion, and she somehow became a part of the primal afterwards?

Just thinking on this topic...

My current headcanon is that this has nothing to do with Allag. Reading back through the Patch Preview, it seems to suggest that Sophia already existed and was well established when Allag came to call. In fact, the entire civilisation that Allag encountered may very well be a result of Sophia's existence and influence, her "equilibrium" keeping the peace for an unknown amount of time already.

So, I think I'd heavily agree that the lyrics here are actually recalling the original summoning of the Eikon, likely during a time of internal struggle and maybe even civil war within the Meracydian nation. Albeit from the Goddess' perspective, I assume.

What's bothering me at the moment is the second part of the verse...

Her memory, fading fast,
Her mother sits, eyes downcast.
An eminent form in hand,
Farewells unsaid...

Looking at the Sophia we encounter, she does have an "eminent form in hand", namely that ball, which I'm going to assume is "Cintamani" (I'm justifying this based on the assumption that we're chanting, or "praying", to it during the course of the song - it's important). This makes me think that the Mother is actually someone important; She has possession of this ball, or I'm going to say crystal (we'll come back to this), which has some level of notoriety or importance. She may even have been killed because of it?

The third part then gives us some more detail of what happened next...

Now once a certainty, lost in grief.
A daughter's desperate cries, unheard pleas.
Forsaken ancient rite, on her knees.
A prayer passes from her lips,
Into her soul the Goddess whispers:

The Daughter is distraught, she's either witnessed or found her dead/dying Mother and is weeping on her knees. And in that desperate moment, she prays for her Mother to be returned to her. Her prayers are answered... (and she's enthralled in the process)

Here's the darkfoil hat part:

Why is there something of certainty about the Mother that's suddenly been lost? Why is she so important and why does she have Cintamani? My current guess, would be that Cintamani is a Crystal of Light. We've seen them before; Matoya has a very nice, spherical, one sat at home. And we know that they are extremely powerful... So powerful, in-fact, that they can out-perform our cheap-as Crystals of Light today, given that Hydaelyn had a lot more power back then (Inflation; go figure).

If that's the case, then was the Mother actually a Warrior of Light? A champion of her people who saved their realm from untold evils? And, in this multi-cultural Meracydian nation, did some have an axe to grind with their WoL? Did, perhaps, some of them fear or loathe her for her power? Enough to try and get rid of her?

We know from Unukalhai that WoL in other worlds have become god-like through their power and constant "winning", and depending on which side of that equation you fell on, there would conceivably be groups of people who wouldn't be appreciative of the effort and would see them as a menace.

There's also another comment in the 3.4 story, that one goal of the current Ascian antagonism aim to achieve something important: "when the beast tribes exhaust their belief in their primitive gods (primals), who will they look towards to save them?". 3.0 showed us a first glimpse of the Archbishop, on his last legs, questioning who we were and what we were becoming?

This brings me to a scary conclusion; Sophia is a fallen Warrior of Light. In fact, this could possibly explain Sephirot as well, as a Champion of his tree-like race. They are both Eikons, and through the prayers of their "followers" (for want of a better term) their Crystals of Light have reacted in the same way that any other crystals would given enough thought and prayer... they've summoned and empowered an idealistic, Eikonic version of their respective Warrior of Light, deiforming the real entity in the process. That's why Eikon's don't represent elements, they are the idealistic form of an actual Warrior of Light, blessed by the elements of the Crystals of Light that the Warrior obtained.

So the bigger question is; what happens to us if we keep winning???