"Weapons are part of my religion..."
Like many of you, I'm currently all in on The Mandalorian, the story of Din Djarin as he follows his moral compass through an inter-solar civilization in decline. While the show doesn't ruminate much on religion, some tantalizing bits of lore are dropped here and there. Din's wepons are part of his religion. His armor, forged from the valuable alloy beskar, is also central to his faith and he has taken an oath never to reveal his face to another living individual.
In the second season, he finally encounters other Mandalorians and we learn that the Mandalorian faction he belongs to are fanatics and seemingly decedents of the militant Death Watch. The groundwork seems to be presented for him to not only flee from the empire, but perhaps flee from religious fundamentalism as well.
On the other hand, as Jack Jenkins explored in a Religion News article, things might well be moving in an entirely different direction, toward "an indictment of faith-fueled conflict, and a celebration of religious pluralism."
This all got me thinking more and more about the holy armor and weapons of the Mandalorian -- especially when compared to the various weapons that have ceremonial and symbolic meaning in various real-world faiths. There's the kirpan dagger of the SIkhs, which is one of their five articles of faith. Various other weapons number among the ceremonial Shastar of the Sikhs. Various other weapons are key to the religious iconography of various faiths, including the Kartika flaying knife of Vajrayana Buddhism, the Kīla dagger of Tibetan Buddhism, the divine trident or Trishula of Hinudism -- among many others. There's also a wide variety of holy armor, from the figurative "full armor of god" in Christian traditions to the various divine armors in Hinduism.
Now, the Mandalorians certainly have a kind of "divine weapon" in the dark saber, but the rest of their armament is also fascinating. Each and every feature is designed to counter particular Jedi abilities, dating back to an age of religious conquest and conflict with the Jedi knights. Their Beskar armor is proof against light sabers. Their jetpacks help distance them from the melee might of the Jedi and their vambraces boast grappling lines and paralyzing darts to limit the free movement of their adversaries.
But I wonder what purely symbolic and metaphoric powers would have also been attributed to these weapons. Perhaps someone has already considered this in the wide realm of Star Wars fiction, but I can easily imagine a number of meanings based on real-world traditions.
Individual pieces of armor might be aligned with particular spiritual weaknesses (the heart, the liver, the groin, the vain face). The jetpack might encompass spiritual ascension and the flame thrower the purifying fire of faith. Whistling birds seem to speak to serenity and calm, while the grappling line reminds me of the Gleipnir in Norse mythology, used to bind the great wolf Fenrir -- a cord that cannot be broken due the resilient substances/ideas bound up in its creation.
Anyway, there's a lot of room for contemplation there.
Image via StarWars.com
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