Why are the Snail Shamans? Script
The Snail Shamans are one of the biggest mysteries in all of Hallownest. I know I’ve said that before, about the Ancient Civilization, about Mask Maker, about the nature of Higher Beings, about Mister Mushroom, and about Zote’s political ideology. But I really do mean it this time.
The Snail Shamans are a pretty easy group of characters to overlook in Hollow Knight. They’re definitely important, but they don’t seem too related to anything that actually happens in the main story the character unravels throughout the game. The Shamans also don’t really tell us much about who they are or where they came from. This is in part due to the fact that the vast majority of them are dead. And for the one Shaman who is alive, his dialogue only gives us small glimpses into the Snail Shaman culture and practices.
One important thing to understand about the Snail Shamans is how they are related to Soul, one of the main spell systems found in Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight’s spell system is introduced very early in the game, and while it’s easy to understand mechanically, the lore surrounding it isn’t quite as straightforward. Hitting enemies will give you “Soul” which you can “Focus” to either heal or use attacks. But what is Soul? Is it like mana? Why is Soul always displayed as a white liquidy goop? Is it some kind of “spiritual milk”?
It’s possible that Soul
even have some kind of taste. The Hunter shares his thoughts in the Soul
Twister hunter’s journal entry, saying:
I have heard others talk about 'soul' but I do not understand what it actually is. I do know that freshly killed meat tastes best - is that because the 'soul' still clings to it?
Of course this seems more like idle speculation on the Hunter’s part, and unfortunately, he doesn’t actually tell us what Soul might taste like, so we can only make educated guesses on that front.
Hollow Knight’s Soul system draws more from the concept of shamanism than the traditional fantasy magic systems you’d find in stuff like Lord of the Rings or Arthur. Basically, every living bug contains Soul, and this Soul is used to animate their bodies, so Soul seems to act like a lifeforce primarily. But Soul can be found elsewhere. In fact, Soul is so prevalent throughout the world that it permeates the air itself, and Soul is so valuable that several groups in Hallownest have taken efforts to store or manipulate Soul in some way.
The Ancient Civilization built totems used to store Soul. The Soul Sanctum scholars appeared to have studied these totems and ended up using glass jars to store the Soul of bugs they captured. And then there’s the Snail Shamans. Their goals and habits are probably even more vague than the Ancient Civilizatio At least we know that they were worshipping the Void. As for the Shamans, they just sort of hang out inside their own little mounds. And we don’t know exactly why. We also have no idea where they came from or how they fit in with the other groups in Hallownest.
But it’s clear that they have a strong connection to Soul, and that connection ties deeply into how they live their lives. The majority of the Shamans the Knight finds are located in these areas called mounds. These mounds are described by the Wanderer’s Journal as ancient temples constructed from the bones and shells of innumerable dead creatures. These mounds also appear to have some actual structure to them, with several beams of wood arranged in various ways. And I use the term “structure” loosely.
And just to clarify, this stuff isn’t technically wood, but instead “shellwood”. The Hunter mentions that Zote’s Life Ender is made from this shellwood substance, and there’s also a developer’s note about it as well. But what is shellwood actually? How would one carve a shell into wood? Well, my theory is that I have no fucking idea.
Getting back to the mounds, I’m guessing they are supposed to be similar to burial mounds. There’s literally a bench made out of bones here, so I don’t think that’s much of a stretch. The Shaman even says that the spirits of his ancestors will watch over the Knight when he forces it to kill the Elder Balder. There’s no denying that Soul is connected to dead bugs. Whenever you cast a spell, you can hear whispering coming from the Soul. Which makes sense because the Knight is literally conjuring an angry spirit and firing it off to attack its foes, hence the name “Vengeful Spirit”. The Soul Sanctum bugs also fire attacks that make this whispering sound. We can even hear the nightmarish cries of distressed Souls in the second phase of the Soul Master fight.
This is kinda weird. There are already ghosts in Hollow Knight, but these creatures are completely different. Ghosts are made up of Essence, a substance which can take the form of bygone memories. So Essence can hold part of a bug’s personality or identity in a sense. But Soul can kinda do the same thing. The whispering of Souls implies it holds some semblance of the bugs it occupies. And Soul can take the form of Spirits which… I think are the same things as ghosts? So there are two different forces in the world of Hollow Knight that can create apparitions. This is a pretty big deviation from how actual ghosts work in the real world. But we all know how that stuff works, so I don’t want to bore you with the details.
The Ancestral Mound also
gives us a bit more information about the Snail Shamans via the Whispering Root
found there. The dialogue produced by this root reads:
...Soul attuned...
...Spiral focus...
...Shunned Power...
The first line is a little vague. It just seems to be confirming that the Snail Shaman is attuned to Soul in some way. We don’t really know how difficult it is to be Soul attuned, but it seems like the Snail Shamans had a much better grasp on how to use Soul when compared against the bugs of Hallownest, even including the ones in the Soul Sanctum.
We only see the Snail Shaman use Soul once. He actually uses his cute little staff to conjure up the Vengeful Spirit out of thin air. He demonstrates a clear capacity to manipulate Soul when he does this.
The Snail Shaman also has the Soul Catcher charm, which is used by Shamans to collect Soul from the world around them. Another Shaman relic found in the game, the Shaman Stone, informs us that the Snail Shamans have spent generations growing their knowledge of Soul manipulation to create powerful spells. One final Shaman charm even gives us a peek into how Shamans once lived. The Soul Eater charm is a forgotten Shaman artifact that was used to draw Soul from still-living creatures. So it seems like Shamans of the past were more intent on taking Soul from others, instead of passively collecting Souls in temples riddled with remains. As for why this practice was forgotten, it may have to do with the arrival of the Pale King in Hallownest.
We know that the King did not approve of this sort of repurposing of other bugs’ Soul. He explicitly objected to the action taken by the bugs of the Soul Sanctum. These bugs harvested the Souls of others, literally consuming Soul to the point where their bodies became bloated and deformed. My favorite example of this has to be the Soul Master. When staggered, we can literally see Soul escaping out of his body as he shrivels up like a raisin. And when he dies, the Desolate Dive ability seeps out of his mouth like a deflating balloon.
The second line given by the Whispering Root might give us another little insight into how the Snail Shamans are able to manipulate Soul. The “spiral focus” line might be referring to the spiral shell the Shaman wears on his head. This spiral pattern also shows up on the inside of all three Snail Shaman charms, a small detail that might highlight its importance.
There seems to be some sort of connection between the use of Soul, focusing and the head. The Godseeker focuses using a crest located on the mask she wears on her head. Although in this case, she isn’t focusing Soul, but thoughts. The Godseeker is sort of an outlier here, but she still shows a connection between the head of a creature, and the act of focusing.
There’s also the Kingsoul and Void Heart charms. Another Hollow Knight lore YouTuber, Ccmaci, pointed out to me that these charms have a similar looking crest or insignia on their foreheads, like what we see with the Godseeker’s mask. This might entirely be a coincidence, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional, as it could imply the Knight having a greater mastery over Soul and Void respectively.
The Soul Sanctum bugs claim that they are trying to obtain a pure “Focus” which somehow involves consuming large amounts of Soul. One of the end results of this is how their minds swell and ache. On top of that, all of the scholars wear these strange jewels on their heads, which are occasionally used to fire off Soul attacks. These appear to be the same objects that we see on the Spell Twister charm. Perhaps they act like the crest on Godseekers head, helping them focus. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else to go on here.
Another vague connection we can make is to the Mask Maker. The Mask Maker tells us that one requires a face to “define, focus and exist”, which is pretty open to interpretation but it’s definitely important. So maybe this head-Soul connection is an extension of that in some way.
That being said, Soul is such a vague force in this game that you can connect it to a lot of things, and it’s hard to tell what connections were actually intended by Team Cherry. In my King’s Pass video, I talked a lot about focusing and Soul and how regular bugs might be able to focus their own Souls in some way. In my Silksong speculation videos, I talk about how Hornet might be able to make silk that is composed of Soul. In my video discussing the post war politics of Australia after the Emu War, I mentioned that Soul might taste like vegemite. And with so many different ways Soul can be interpreted, it’s kinda hard to say there is a definite connection between the concept of the face or the head and Soul. But I do think there are some strands there.
The last line of the Whispering Root is fairly easy to understand. The Shaman’s power to use Soul was probably shunned by the Pale King. Like I said earlier, he didn’t seem to approve of the Soul Sanctum’s experiments at all. Or it might just be that the other bugs of Hallownest find freaky snail people with bone furniture both scary and disgusting. We know other strange powers like Lifeblood were considered taboo in Hallownest too. So something as strange as Soul manipulation was probably treated the same way.
This line could also
explain another phenomenon we see with the Shamans. We know from the Snail
Shaman’s dialogue that he is bound to the Ancestral Mound in some way. There’s
also a developer’s note about this line of dialogue, which reads:
At some point hints that he can not leave the mound. "Can not" could mean he stays out of duty, or literally can not leave
We find Snail Shamans in the Ancestral Mound, Overgrown Mound and Crystallized Mound. If we find any of them outside of a mound, they are either buried, or being brutally tortured. There’s one in the Soul Sanctum, who appears to have been subjected to experiments. And there’s one sealed in a sarcophagus in the Resting Grounds.
Perhaps Snail Shamans were forced to remain near their mounds due to how the rest of Hallownest perceived their power. But that doesn’t seem too likely considering everyone is pretty much dead at this point. So it’s probably either that the Shaman has a sense of duty to the mound, or his strength is somehow tied to it. Maybe the Shaman’s spells don’t work as well outside the mound, so he is vastly underpowered to leave his home. After all, he doesn’t even seem capable of clearing out his own den of dangerous creatures. But it’s anyone’s guess, honestly. Team Cherry very much left this part of the lore ambiguous.
Of course, there’s one question looming over the nature of the Snail Shamans. A question that gets thrown around a lot whenever discussion about them arises. Are the Snail Shamans Void? In my video on the Ancient Civilization, I confidently said there was no question that these things were Void creatures. But… I think I jumped the gun a little bit. So now it’s time to lace up those clown shoes, put on that clown makeup, and pull out your clown keyboards, because we are about to have a serious discussion about whether or not Snail Shamans are Void. So what was 2019 mossbag’s reasoning behind calling the Shamans Void?
Well, it mainly comes down to a few simple observations. When the Knight examines the Snail Shaman in the Soul Sanctum, it explodes into black particles that the Knight absorbs. The Snail Shaman in the Crystalized Mound also explodes in the same way. The Knight collects the Shade Soul and Descending Dark from these Shamans respectively. What’s interesting here is that while the prompts for these moves still mention spirits, their descriptions in the menu describe them as shadows. For the Abyss Shriek move, we can even see the attack uses a combination of Soul and shadow. And there’s even unused art of a Vengeful Spirit-like move with this same motif. Regardless, these upgrades all mix the original Soul-based attacks to also use Void.
One noteworthy distinction between the Soul upgrades and the Void upgrades is that the Soul upgrades appear as these little spirit sprites. The Void spells don’t have this at all. In all three instances, it’s black balls flying into the Knight. And in the third instance that takes place in the Abyss, we can be fairly sure that the Knight is consuming Void.
This invites a very simple conclusion. These Shamans explode into Void which the Knight then sucks up to inherit their spells. And that makes sense. Bada bing bada boom, right? Well, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Characters exploding into stuff happens on a number of occasions in Hollow Knight, and it doesn’t always make sense.
For example, when the Seer disappears after collecting 2400 Essence, she appears to transform into a Lumafly. It’s a really small detail that might have lore implications, but there is absolutely nothing else in the game to follow up on this, and it opens such a huge can of worms that I’m afraid to even talk about it.
There’s also the Grey Mourner and the Brooding Mawlek who explode into Mask Shards. This makes absolutely no sense. If people can just die and turn into masks, then why the hell do we need Mask Maker? Are masks somehow connected to the Souls of bugs? Was the Brooding Mawlek hiding this Mask Shard up its asshole? That sounds painful! A more agreeable and straightforward explanation is that this is just a gameplay quirk.
Another example we can compare this to is Grey Prince Zote. Several of his animations use the black ball effect similar to what we see with the Snail Shamans and the Abyss. Since this entire fight takes place inside a Dream concocted by Bretta’s obsessive mind, this probably isn’t supposed to imply that Zote is Void. In fact, it seems highly unlikely that Bretta would even know what Void is. So black stuff that appears in her dream is probably just an ingame effect used to portray the conjuring of a character made up mostly of the color black.
We’re in a similar boat with these Shamans. These effects might purely be an aesthetic choice by Team Cherry, and not proof that the Shamans are actually Void. If we talk to the Snail Shaman after getting the Shade Soul, he implies that it was the Knight’s essence that melded with the spell, using a powerful source to do so. The wording here is annoying in how obscure it is. So stuff goes into the Knight, giving it enough power to transform the spell inside it with its own essence, and by essence, I don’t mean actual Essence, but Void.
There’s enough vagueness there to perhaps argue that the Knight is absorbing the power of the Shamans in a general sense, and not somehow absorbing their Void bodies, but it would honestly make more sense to me if they were just Void. I mean that seems to be the case when we get the Abyss Shriek.
Another possible hint at Shamans being Void is how the Shaman in the Overgrown Mound appears to be melting, kind of like what we see with Void in other locations, particularly the Collector. But it could be just dark colored leaves, to help sell the “overgrown” aspect of the mound. As a side note, if the Shamans are Void, it’s kinda weird they put one in a sarcophagus. It’s certainly possible, but I think it would be the only instance of a Void creature having a “proper” burial.
Another small detail to consider is how the Snail Shaman calls the Knight a shadow and mentions its “empty face”. This could imply that the Snail Shamans are at least aware of what Void is. The only characters who call the Knight a shadow directly are Hornet and the Dreamers, and arguably Divine, all characters who are more likely to know what Void is. It’s obvious that the Snail Shaman is pretty aware of things, considering he can tell when he is Dream Nailed. Also, the fact that he says our essence melded with the Vengeful Spirit after getting the Shade Soul kinda implies that he knows the Knight is unique. How exactly would a non-Void creature's essence meld with a Void spell?
So that’s all of the evidence for why the Shamans are Void. Our main argument is balls. And yes, balls are pretty convincing in most instances of Hollow Knight lore discussion. But once we get into non-ball related topics, there are a lot of other issues that pop up with this theory.
First of all, if the Shamans are Void, where did they come from? For a lot of Void beings, we have explanations. The Kingsmoulds and Wingmounds were created to serve the Pale King. The Collector probably also came from that mold, and probably is sort of working with the Pale King, it’s a whole thing, we’re not getting into it right now. The Vessels were also created by the Pale King, when he placed eggs containing his children in the Abyss. The ferocious Void Tendrils and Shade Lord appear to be more intricately tied to the Abyss and Void itself, although the specifics are muddy on that front.
The Shamans, on the other hand, don’t have any leads for their possible Void origins. In fact, we are fairly certain they didn’t come from the Abyss at all. After obtaining the Abyss Shriek, the Snail Shaman tells the Knight that the spell must have come from a place the Snail Shamans never thought to look. This implies that the Shamans aren’t connected to the Abyss at all, unless the Snail Shaman somehow forgot where his people came from. That seems unlikely, but we do know that the Snail Shamans have forgotten at least one part of their history, considering the Soul Eater charm is described as a forgotten Shaman relic.
As for their true origins, we do see a similar character to the Snail Shamans in the upcoming Silksong sequel. The Churchkeeper appears to be a similar character archetype as the Shamans, except instead of teaching Hornet how to shoot ghosts out of her face, she’s teaching Hornet how to play songs on her needle. But should this character even be considered a Snail Shaman? Are Snail Shamans even a species? Or do you just need to wear one of those snail hats to become one? Regardless, she is visually similar to them, which might imply Snail Shaman-like creatures aren’t unique to Hallownest.
You could argue that this strengthens the argument against Shamans being Void, but I will say we know so little about what Void is and where it comes from. Who's to say there aren’t other Abyss-like areas beyond Hallownest where Void can be found? So maybe the Shamans found in Hallownest and Pharloom are Void beings who originated from a different place. But, we’re speculating an awful lot here. And this isn’t the only issue that arises with the “Shamans are Void” statement.
Another monkey wrench in this idea is how the Snail Shaman refers to the other Shamans as his relatives. Once you get the Desolate Dive, he mentions his third uncle has the same ability. He also mentions his fourth aunt, who resides in the Crystallized Mound. And he mentions his larger cousin located in the Overgrown Mound.
How exactly would Void beings have relatives? Can Void beings get married, do the nasty and give birth to children? Technically, shades are siblings, which shows that creatures connected to the Void can have relations to one another. But cousins and uncles imply a multigenerational community of Void beings. And... that just sounds kinda silly.
But this does beg the question. What exactly is a “fourth aunt”? In order to answer this question, I decided to consult some of the brightest minds on the entire internet. So naturally, I took to twitter dot com and asked my followers for their thoughts on the matter. Thanks to a very knowledgeable and patient person known as Sage, I was able to uncover the truth. “Fourth aunt” isn’t really a thing. Perhaps a fourth aunt is just your mother or father’s fourth sister. That would be the easiest explanation.
Or a fourth aunt could be a fourth cousin, once removed, which would be someone who shares great great great grandparents with your parents. This would imply that, given none of the Snail Shamans participated in inbreeding, a huge family tree of at least 133 other Snail Shamans must have existed to facilitate the relation between these two characters, let alone the third uncle and larger cousin and whoever the hell these people who are and their relation to the Snail Shaman. And that’s not even considering the sexual reproductive habits of actual snails. And if the Shamans are anything like that, well, things become much more complicated.
Youcould argue that these relations are more sentimental than genealogical. Sorta like dog moms. While that excuse might work for the relatives, we still have to counter with the fact that these Shamans are deeply tied to their ancestors. The spirits of the Snail Shaman’s ancestors are apparently watching over the Ancestral Mound. This not only reinforces the idea of the Shamans being biological creatures that aren’t just created, but it also raises another complicated question.
Can Void beings even have spirits? Void creatures aren’t technically alive, hence the White Lady saying that the Knight died in the Abyss. Obviously Void creatures like the Collector and James Corden have no Soul, but creatures like the Hollow Knight do give off Soul, so maybe they would count? But being a living creature animated by Soul is very different from being a Void creature that can contain or hold Soul within its shell. I don’t think you could say the Hollow Knight really has its own “spirit” in the same sense that a regular creature would have a spirit. Or maybe I’m reading way too far into the concept of spirits and Team Cherry just wanted an excuse to put cute little faces on the Hollow Knight’s attacks.
Either way you slice it, there are some weird questions that pop up around the Snail Shamans. If they truly are Void creatures, why are they unaware of the Abyss? How were they created? Why do they refer to each other as relatives?
If they aren’t Void, why do they explode into black balls that the Knight sucks up and then gains Void spells from them? Why do they still seem to be aware of Void and its shadow-like nature?
In the end, the Snail Shamans don’t have a clear answer. Looking strictly at what’s in the game, it seems more likely that they aren’t Void, since the Void ball phenomenon is easier to handwave than the dialogue we actually get from the Snail Shaman.
And even if we ignore the Void stuff, there’s still the big question of what the older generations of Snail Shamans were doing. The fact that they had a charm like the Soul Eater implies that they were a much more dangerous force in the past. What were these ancient snail people doing exactly? How powerful were these overcooked hotdogs?
I’m gonna hold out hope that Silksong somehow illuminates the Snail Shamans for us. Just gonna go and add it to the Silksong Bingo card right next to more Macebug lore and Funky Mode. I mean William did say we might get some Snail Shaman lore in a Reddit AMA post from 3 years ago. So it’s basically confirmed.
Songs Used:
Dung Defender - Hollow Knight OST
Ancestral Mound Ambient
Resting Grounds - Hollow Knight OST
Soul Sanctum - Hollow Knight OST
Haunted Foes - Hollow Knight OST
Truth Beauty and Hatred - Hollow Knight OST
Fungal Wastes - Hollow Knight OST
Reflection - Hollow Knight OST
Kingdom’s Edge - Hollow Knight OST
Crystal Peak (Main Loop) - Hollow Knight
Overworld Theme - Super Mario Bros 2
Queen’s Garden (Sub Loop) - Hollow Knight
Hornet - Hollow Knight OST
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