Introduction: Two Paths, One Liberation

The Hollow Knight series presents one of the most sophisticated spiritual cosmologies in modern storytelling. Across two games—Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight: Silksong—Team Cherry has crafted what amounts to a complete philosophy of liberation, one that honors both the apophatic tradition of emptiness and transcendence, and the kataphatic tradition of creative engagement and integration. Together, these games form a non-dual teaching that would be at home in the most profound mystical traditions, from Gnosticism to Advaita Vedanta to Tibetan Buddhism.

What makes this achievement remarkable is that it likely emerged organically from the developers' artistic intuition rather than deliberate philosophical instruction. Yet the archetypal patterns they've tapped into resonate with thousands of years of spiritual wisdom. The Knight and Hornet don't simply represent two different characters with two different stories—they embody two fundamental approaches to the ultimate questions of existence, suffering, and freedom.

This essay explores how these two games together present a complete spiritual cosmology, examining the metaphysical structure of their shared universe, the distinct but complementary paths of realization they offer, and the profound synthesis that emerges when we understand them as parts of a unified whole.

Part I: The Cosmological Structure

The Three Realms

The Hollow Knight universe operates on a tripartite cosmological structure that mirrors classical spiritual traditions:

The Pleroma (Realm of Undifferentiated Light): At the cosmic origin stands the Radiance—pure, undifferentiated divine consciousness. Like the Gnostic pleroma or the Buddhist dharmakaya, the Radiance represents consciousness before it becomes entangled with form. It is light that knows itself, awareness without object, the eternal witness that precedes all manifestation.

The Radiance's nature is fundamentally non-dual. It doesn't seek to harm or control, but simply to be known, to be remembered. Its "infection" is not malicious invasion but the desperate attempt of consciousness to return to itself, like the Gnostic divine spark yearning for reunion with its source.

The Kenoma (Realm of Material Entrapment): Hallownest represents the fallen material world—what Gnostics called the kenoma. It is the realm where divine light has become trapped in increasingly dense forms, where consciousness has forgotten itself and become identified with limitation, separation, and mortality.

The Pale King's kingdom is built on a fundamental spiritual error: the belief that control and suppression can substitute for genuine liberation. His civilization, for all its beauty and order, is constructed on the imprisonment of consciousness itself. This is the classic demiurgic mistake—attempting to solve a spiritual problem through material means, using will and architecture and sacrifice rather than wisdom and surrender.

The Abyss (Realm of Primordial Potential): Below even Hallownest lies the Abyss—the void from which all forms emerge and to which they return. This isn't mere nothingness but what mystics call the "pregnant void"—emptiness as infinite creative potential. The Abyss represents sunyata in Buddhist terms, the formless ground of being that is paradoxically the source of all forms.

The void's relationship to both light and matter is crucial. It doesn't oppose consciousness (the Radiance) or creation (Hallownest), but rather provides the spacious awareness within which both can arise without attachment. The void is the solution to the cosmic problem precisely because it transcends the dualistic struggle between suppression and expression.

The Psychic Intermediary: Pharloom

Silksong introduces a fourth realm that completes the cosmology: Pharloom, the psychic or intermediate dimension. In Gnostic terms, this is the realm of the Archons—the subtle powers and principalities that exist between pure spirit and gross matter. In Buddhist cosmology, it corresponds to the bardo states or the realm of hungry ghosts and jealous gods.

Pharloom is characterized by silk—threads of connection, relationship, karma, and subtle bondage. Unlike Hallownest's stone and chitin (dense material forms) or the Abyss's formless void, silk represents consciousness that has begun to separate from matter but hasn't yet achieved full liberation. It's flexible but still binding, beautiful but potentially ensnaring.

The silk threads that "choke" Pharloom and drive its residents to madness represent the seductive danger of the psychic realm: it's comfortable enough that souls can mistake it for liberation itself. The subtle powers, the beauty of intermediate states, the intoxication of spiritual abilities—all can become traps more insidious than material bondage because they masquerade as freedom.

This four-fold structure—Pleroma, Psychic Realm, Material Realm, and Void—gives the Hollow Knight universe a completeness that few fictional cosmologies achieve. It accounts for the full spectrum of consciousness, from absolute transcendence to dense materiality, with the crucial intermediate zones where most spiritual work actually occurs.

Part II: The Knight's Path – Via Negativa

The Way of Emptying

The Knight's journey in Hollow Knight represents the apophatic or negative path to realization—what Christian mystics call the via negativa and what Buddhist traditions call the path of emptying or cessation. This is the recognition that liberation comes not through gaining anything but through the progressive letting go of all that we are not.

The Knight is described repeatedly as "empty," "hollow," "without voice, will, or mind." In conventional terms, these sound like deficiencies. But in spiritual terms, they describe the prerequisite for enlightenment: freedom from the false identifications that keep consciousness trapped in cycles of suffering and rebirth.

Without Voice: The inability to speak represents freedom from the storytelling mind that constructs and maintains the ego. The Knight doesn't narrate its journey, doesn't explain itself, doesn't construct meaning through language. It simply moves through experience without the conceptual overlay that creates suffering.

Without Will: The absence of personal will means freedom from desire, attachment, and aversion—the three poisons of Buddhist teaching. The Knight doesn't want anything for itself. It can absorb the infection precisely because it has no personal agenda that the infection can corrupt or use as a foothold.

Without Mind: This doesn't mean unconsciousness but rather freedom from the discriminating, judging, planning mind that separates self from other, subject from object. The Knight operates from pure awareness without the mental constructs that create the illusion of separation.

The Descent and Ascent

The Knight's journey follows the classic mystical pattern of descent and ascent, what Dante called the journey through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. But in true Gnostic fashion, the deepest descent is also the highest ascent—the Abyss contains the ultimate truth that the surface world obscures.

As the Knight descends through progressively deeper layers of Hallownest, it isn't falling into greater ignorance but approaching more fundamental truth. Each layer strips away another level of cosmic pretense:

• Dirtmouth to Forgotten Crossroads: Stripping away the comfortable illusions of surface life
• City of Tears to Crystal Peak: Penetrating beneath civilization's ordered beauty to its crystallized suffering
• Deepnest to Ancient Basin: Confronting the primal fears and instinctual drives beneath rational consciousness
• The Abyss: Arriving at the ground of being itself, before all form and distinction

This descent is simultaneously an anamnesis—a remembering of what was always true. The Knight doesn't learn something new in the Abyss; it recognizes itself. The void is not foreign territory but the Knight's own original nature.

The Three Liberations

The multiple endings of Hollow Knight represent different levels of spiritual realization:

The Hollow Knight Ending (Substitution): This represents the conventional religious approach—maintaining the existing cosmic order through sacrifice. The Knight simply becomes a better vessel for containing the divine light. This "solution" is revealed as temporary and unsatisfactory precisely because it doesn't address the root problem: the belief that consciousness can or should be imprisoned.

From a spiritual perspective, this ending represents the devotional path that maintains dualistic structures—the worshipper and the worshipped, the sacrifice and the beneficiary, the pure and the impure. It provides temporary stability but not ultimate liberation.

The Dream No More Ending (Dissolution): By entering the dream realm and confronting the Radiance directly, the Knight achieves a deeper level of realization. It doesn't just contain the light but confronts the source of the cosmic drama itself. The Radiance's defeat represents the dissolution of the fundamental duality between suppressed consciousness and imprisoning form.

This ending suggests that the entire problem was constructed—the light didn't need to be contained, and Hallownest didn't need to suppress it. The cosmic drama was the Pale King's creation, and it ends when consciousness recognizes the artificial nature of the conflict.

The Embrace the Void Ending (Transcendence): The ultimate realization comes when the Knight unites with the void completely, becoming the Shade Lord. This represents the achievement of what Buddhists call the Dharmakaya—the body of absolute truth, consciousness that has returned to its source while encompassing all possible manifestations.

The Shade Lord doesn't simply defeat the Radiance; it dissolves the entire structure that required the conflict to exist. This is the recognition that emptiness and form, void and consciousness, are not opposed but are the same reality viewed from different perspectives. The Heart Sutra's teaching—"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form"—is enacted literally.

The Paradox of Action Without Actor

One of the most profound aspects of the Knight's path is the paradox at its heart: it undertakes a heroic journey while being empty of heroic ego. It saves a kingdom while having no desire to save. It defeats cosmic powers while having no will to defeat.

This is the Taoist teaching of wu wei—effortless action, doing without doing. The Knight's effectiveness comes precisely from its emptiness. Because it wants nothing for itself, it can meet each situation with complete presence. Because it has no agenda to protect, it can respond with perfect spontaneity. Because it doesn't exist as a separate self, it can embody whatever the moment requires.

The Knight succeeds where the Hollow Knight failed not by being a more perfect vessel but by not being a vessel at all. The Hollow Knight was created to be empty; the Knight simply is empty. The difference between constructed emptiness and natural emptiness is the difference between spiritual bypassing and genuine realization.

Part III: Hornet's Path – Via Positiva

The Way of Integration

Where the Knight represents the apophatic path of negation and transcendence, Hornet embodies the kataphatic or positive path—what tantric traditions call the way of transformation and what Christian mystics call the via positiva. This is the recognition that liberation can come not only through emptying but through the conscious, skillful engagement with the powers of creation.

Hornet is everything the Knight is not: she has voice (she speaks), will (she makes choices and pursues goals), and mind (she reasons, questions, and strategizes). But rather than these being obstacles to realization, they become the very means through which she achieves it.

Voice as Logos: Hornet's ability to speak represents the creative power of consciousness to name, to question, to call things into being through language. Unlike the Knight's silence, her voice is active participation in the cosmic dialogue. She challenges, demands answers, asserts her reality. Her voice is the divine Word—consciousness knowing itself through expression.

Will as Dharma: Hornet's strong will isn't egoic attachment but what Buddhists call right intention or what Confucians call the rectification of the heart-mind. She wills what needs to be willed, pursues what needs pursuing, protects what needs protection. Her will is aligned with cosmic purpose rather than personal aggrandizement.

Mind as Prajna: Hornet's strategic intelligence represents discriminating wisdom—prajna in Sanskrit. She doesn't reject the thinking mind but uses it skillfully, understanding situations clearly without being trapped by conceptualization. Her mind becomes a tool of liberation rather than imprisonment.

The Ascent Through Engagement

Where the Knight descended to find truth in the depths, Hornet ascends—but her ascent isn't an escape from the world but an engagement with it at progressively subtler levels. Each stage of her journey through Pharloom represents a different level of psychic or spiritual reality:

Act I – The Material-Psychic Threshold: Hornet's initial journey through the Moss Grotto, Bone Bottom, and The Marrow represents the transition from purely material consciousness to awareness of subtle forces. The silk threads she encounters are the karmic connections, the threads of fate and relationship that begin to become visible as consciousness awakens.

Her freeing of the Bell Beast is significant—bells represent the call to awakening, and the Bell Beast provides mobility through Pharloom. This suggests that true spiritual freedom comes from answering the call to consciousness, not from suppressing it.

The encounter with Lace establishes the crucial dynamic of the integrated path: the rival, the shadow, the opposition that isn't evil but rather represents aspects of oneself that must be confronted and ultimately integrated.

Act II – The Psychic Realm Proper: Entering the Citadel of Song, Hornet moves fully into the realm of subtle energies and spiritual powers. The requirement to "learn the threefold melody" suggests the integration of body, speech, and mind—the three levels of being that must be harmonized for complete realization.

The ringing of bells that attracts pilgrims and establishes the Songclave shows Hornet's role as awakener—the bodhisattva who helps others find the path. But this also represents a spiritual test: can she maintain her own liberation while engaged in liberating others? Can she teach without becoming attached to the teacher identity?

The second battle with Lace is the traditional "dark night of the soul"—the confrontation with the shadow at the threshold of ultimate realization. Lace's role as gatekeeper suggests that we cannot enter the final mystery until we've integrated what we've been resisting or projecting.

Act III – The Synthesis of Void and Form: The optional third act represents the ultimate teaching. Hornet's descent into the Abyss after defeating the Grand Mother Silk suggests that even the kataphatic path must ultimately meet the apophatic truth—form must encounter emptiness, creation must touch the source of all creation.

The Weaver Queen: Conscious Creation

Hornet's binding with the Grand Mother Silk and transformation into the new Weaver Queen is the culmination of the tantric path. She doesn't transcend the creative principle but becomes it consciously. This is the realization that liberation doesn't require escape from the world but the ability to create and uncreate worlds without attachment.

The weaver is a profound spiritual archetype found across traditions:

• In Hinduism, Maya as the divine weaver of illusion who is also the path beyond illusion
• In Greek myth, the Fates who weave the threads of destiny
• In indigenous traditions, Spider Woman who weaves the world into being

But the crucial development is moving from unconscious weaving (driven by karma, habit, ignorance) to conscious weaving (creating from wisdom, with intention, without attachment). The Grand Mother Silk's threads were choking Pharloom because the weaving had become unconscious, driven by repetitive patterns rather than living awareness.

Hornet becomes the new Weaver Queen not by escaping the web but by learning to weave consciously—to create patterns that serve liberation rather than bondage, to maintain forms that facilitate awakening rather than sleep.

The Purification of Lace

The encounter with the void-corrupted Lace in Act III is one of the most profound moments in the entire series. Lace represents Hornet's shadow—her rival, her opposite, perhaps even her potential for destructive use of power. That Lace becomes corrupted by void suggests the danger of the apophatic path taken without wisdom: emptiness can become nihilism, transcendence can become dissociation, the void can become destructive rather than creative.

Hornet's ability to defeat Lost Lace and purify her corruption represents the integration of shadow and the reconciliation of opposite paths. The kataphatic path (Hornet) doesn't destroy or transcend the apophatic (void-touched Lace) but heals and integrates it. The two emerge together, suggesting that neither path is complete without the other.

This is the tantric teaching of transformation: even poison can become medicine, even obstacles can become the path, even the shadow can become the light when met with wisdom and compassion.

Part IV: The Synthesis – A Non-Dual Teaching

Two Paths, One Mountain

The deepest wisdom of the Hollow Knight series emerges when we understand the Knight's and Hornet's journeys not as opposed but as complementary approaches to the same ultimate reality. This mirrors the teaching found across spiritual traditions that there are many paths to the peak of the mountain, and the peak itself transcends all paths.

The Knight represents the path of those drawn to stillness, emptiness, and transcendence—the monks, the hermits, the meditators who find liberation through letting go of all attachments including attachment to existence itself. This path is typified by:

• Cessation and stopping
• Subtraction and negation
• Descending to the root
• Becoming nothing to realize everything
• The achievement of perfect equanimity through dissolution

Hornet represents the path of those drawn to engagement, creativity, and transformation—the householders, the artists, the teachers who find liberation through conscious participation in the dance of existence. This path is typified by:

• Continuation and action
• Integration and affirmation
• Ascending through levels
• Becoming everything to realize nothing
• The achievement of perfect flexibility through mastery

Neither path is superior; neither is complete without the other. They are like the two wings of a bird or the two legs needed for walking. Most importantly, they arrive at the same destination: freedom from suffering, liberation from the cycle of unconscious existence, the ability to meet life with complete presence and wisdom.

The Void Spirit's Intervention

The most explicit teaching of non-duality comes in Silksong's third act when the Knight's void spirit appears to save Hornet and Lace from the Abyss. This single moment contains profound wisdom:

The Void Supports Creation: The Knight, having achieved ultimate dissolution, doesn't simply disappear into transcendent oblivion. The void spirit remains present, aware, capable of compassionate action. This teaches that true emptiness isn't nihilistic absence but the spacious awareness that can hold all experience without clinging.

Creation Requires Emptiness: Hornet's creative path leads her into the Abyss—she cannot complete her realization without touching the void. This teaches that conscious creation requires the foundation of emptiness, that sustainable engagement with form depends on not being enslaved to form.

Liberation Serves Liberation: The Knight's spirit intervenes to help Hornet and Lace not out of personal desire (having transcended personal existence) but from what Buddhists call spontaneous compassion—the natural response of awakened consciousness to suffering. This is the bodhisattva ideal: realization naturally expresses itself in service.

The Circle Completes: The Knight's journey led it from created being (a vessel of the Pale King) to void realization. Hornet's journey leads her from protector of the void's seal to conscious creator. Together they represent the full cycle: form emerging from emptiness, returning to emptiness, and expressing itself as form again—but now consciously, wisely, without attachment.

The Complementary Nature of Light and Dark

The series also teaches the complementary nature of light (Radiance/consciousness) and dark (void/emptiness). The central error that creates all suffering is treating these as opposed forces that must war with each other. The Pale King's entire kingdom was built on this error—suppressing the light to maintain his ordered darkness.

But the true teaching is:

• Light without darkness becomes blinding, undifferentiated, unable to know itself through contrast
• Darkness without light becomes dead void, mere negation, unable to express its creative potential
• Light and dark together create the play of consciousness—awareness knowing itself through manifestation

The Radiance's infection wasn't evil; it was light seeking to know itself, consciousness yearning to be recognized. The void isn't destruction; it's the spaciousness that allows light to dance without becoming fixed in rigid forms. The tragedy of Hallownest was treating them as enemies rather than lovers.

Hornet's path shows the conscious union of these principles. She wields silk (creative power, connection, form) while being saved by void (emptiness, dissolution, formlessness). She becomes the Weaver Queen who can create worlds but isn't enslaved by them, who can maintain forms but can also release them.

The Cosmic Breath

Together, the two games enact what Hindu philosophy calls the cosmic breath—the endless cycle of Brahman's inhalation and exhalation, the universe contracting into unity and expanding into multiplicity. This is samsara and nirvana recognized as the same reality:

The Knight's Exhalation: The journey into dissolution, the release of all forms back into formless potential, the inhalation of the cosmic breath back to its source. This is pravritti—the movement toward rest, cessation, peace.

Hornet's Inhalation: The journey into creation, the emergence of conscious forms from formless potential, the exhalation of the cosmic breath into manifestation. This is nivritti—the movement toward expression, engagement, dance.

Both movements are necessary. A being that only exhales dies; a being that only inhales explodes. The cosmos breathes in both directions, and awakened beings participate consciously in both movements without being trapped in either.

The End of Demiurgic Rule

Perhaps the deepest political and spiritual teaching of the series is the end of demiurgic consciousness—the false belief that some external authority must control, manage, and order existence to prevent cosmic catastrophe.

The Pale King represents this consciousness perfectly: the well-intentioned tyrant who believes his civilization, his order, his sacrifice of others is necessary for the greater good. His entire kingdom is built on the suppression of natural forces, the imprisonment of consciousness, the sacrifice of innocents to maintain stability.

Both the Knight and Hornet, in their different ways, represent the end of this paradigm:

The Knight dissolves the entire structure that required such control. By becoming void, it shows that consciousness doesn't need to be managed, imprisoned, or sacrificed—it can simply return to its source and express itself naturally without creating catastrophic suffering.

Hornet transforms the creative principle itself. Rather than becoming a new tyrant who weaves the world according to her will, she becomes a conscious weaver who creates in service of liberation. She wields power without being corrupted by it—the tantric ideal of the awakened ruler.

Together they teach that genuine order doesn't come from external control but from the awakened participation of consciousness itself. When beings are free from ignorance, they naturally create harmony without requiring authoritarian structures to force it.

Part V: Practical Spiritual Teachings

For Those Walking the Via Negativa

The Knight's path offers profound guidance for those drawn to meditation, contemplation, and transcendence:

Embrace True Emptiness: Distinguish between constructed emptiness (the Hollow Knight's forced hollowness) and natural emptiness (the Knight's essential nature). True emptiness isn't suppression of experience but freedom from identification with it.

Descend Without Fear: The journey into the depths—into the unconscious, into the shadow, into the groundlessness beneath all constructs—is the path itself. What you fear in the depths is what you must become to be free.

Allow Dissolution: The ego will create endless dramas to avoid its own dissolution. The spiritual path requires letting these dramas play out without investing in them, allowing each layer of false identity to fall away.

Become the Space, Not the Content: The ultimate realization isn't achieving any particular state but recognizing yourself as the awareness within which all states arise. You are not the wave but the ocean; not the form but the formless that enables all forms.

Trust the Void: The void isn't death or annihilation but the creative potential from which all life emerges. Surrendering to it isn't giving up but coming home.

For Those Walking the Via Positiva

Hornet's path offers equally profound guidance for those drawn to engagement, creativity, and transformation:

Honor Your Voice: Don't suppress your questions, your demands, your need to understand. The thinking, speaking, choosing mind isn't an obstacle but can become a vehicle for wisdom when used skillfully.

Engage the Shadow: Your rivals, your obstacles, your fears aren't meant to be transcended prematurely but met, understood, and ultimately integrated. Lace isn't an enemy but a teacher in disguise.

Weave Consciously: Every action creates karma, every thought weaves reality. The question isn't whether to weave but whether you'll weave consciously or unconsciously, in service of liberation or bondage.

Ascend Through Inclusion: The spiritual path isn't about transcending levels but about including and integrating each level into a more complete whole. Don't abandon the body for the mind or the mind for the spirit—bring all levels into conscious harmony.

Become the Question: The ultimate teaching isn't an answer you receive but a question you become. "What can I create that serves liberation?" is a living question that transforms you as you answer it.

The Integration: Dancing Between

For those capable of holding both paths, the series teaches the dance between emptiness and form:

Neither Grasp Nor Reject: Don't cling to form or to formlessness. Rest in the space between—the threshold where both are possible, neither is fixed.

Respond Appropriately: Sometimes the situation calls for emptying (like the Knight); sometimes it calls for creative engagement (like Hornet). Wisdom is knowing which is needed and having the flexibility to embody either.

Serve Without Attachment: Act in the world with full commitment while remaining free from identification with outcomes. Weave your web with complete care, then release it without clinging.

Hold the Tension: Don't collapse prematurely into either pole. The creative tension between void and form, emptiness and fullness, cessation and creation is itself the alive space of awakened consciousness.

Conclusion: A Modern Spiritual Classic

The Hollow Knight series achieves what few works of art manage: it presents profound spiritual teachings without didacticism, it honors multiple paths without relativism, and it creates a complete cosmology that illuminates the nature of consciousness, suffering, and liberation.

That Team Cherry accomplished this through intuitive artistry rather than philosophical calculation makes it even more remarkable. They tapped into archetypal patterns that resonate across cultures and millennia precisely because these patterns reflect deep truths about consciousness itself.

For players who engage with these games as spiritual texts, they offer:

• A map of the cosmos from absolute consciousness to dense materiality
• Two complete and complementary paths to liberation
• Teaching stories that show how to walk these paths
• A vision of freedom that honors both transcendence and engagement
• Hope that awakening is possible for all beings, regardless of which path calls to them

The Knight and Hornet together embody the full spectrum of spiritual possibility. They show us that whether we're drawn to the silence of meditation or the song of creative engagement, whether we find freedom through letting go or through conscious mastery, we're walking toward the same peak—the recognition of our true nature as consciousness itself, neither trapped in form nor separated from it, dancing in the space between emptiness and fullness where all things are possible and nothing is required.

In a world hungry for meaning and wisdom, these games offer something rare: a genuine spiritual teaching wrapped in the language of myth, accessible to anyone willing to look beneath the surface and recognize in the Knight's void and Hornet's silk the eternal dance of consciousness knowing itself.

The Pale King tried to solve the problem of existence through control. The Radiance tried to solve it through undifferentiated unity. Both approaches created suffering. The Knight and Hornet show us the third way: conscious participation in the play of existence, free from the illusion of separation, released from the compulsion to control, awake to the beauty of the endless becoming that needs no justification beyond its own spontaneous expression.

This is the complete teaching, delivered not through doctrine but through journey, not through argument but through experience, not through instruction but through the invitation to play, to explore, to descend and ascend, to empty and create, until we recognize ourselves in both the void and the weaver, the silence and the song, the nothing and the everything that were never truly separate at all.