The Healing Church & Religious Identity

After being transported to Yahar’gul, The Unseen Village, you take a left downstairs, encountering a cowering nun, murmuring orisons.

If the player is not adorned in Church Garb, including Gascoigne’s attire, the nun will not respond, instead continuing the fearful recitation.

Returning with the attire familiar to her, she will instill trust after several prompted dialogues, from which you may send her to any of the designated safe places.

What is curious is the usage of plurality for deification.

Initially, the first guess of Bloodborne’s detailed religion, namely pertaining to the Healing Church and its influence on Yharnamites, would be some variant of Christianity. Most plausibly, Catholicism.

The former’s generalisation being identified as monotheistic.

However, the nun, along with a number of other NPCs, is referring to ‘gods’, alluding to polytheism.

Thereby, the question of religion arises in relation to what precisely is practiced and who or what is worshipped.

At introduction, we see beasts crucified and perused upon burning stakes.

It is safe to assume, Christianity was, indeed, the identified religion, yet naturally corrupted by Man’s deviation to heathenism, effectively breaking one of the first of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Or, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”

The beasts are these graven images.

Effigies intended to represent God yet, in actuality, are bastardisations.

God takes many corporeal forms, but to have His true form depicted by the flesh, whether animal or human, is an arrant expression of blasphemy.

The beasts, themselves, come in many forms.

The product of the Healing Church’s egregious experimentation, denaturing or altering the properties of blood, has resulted in the destruction and grotesque transformation of both Old and Central Yharnam, the former being even more unwelcoming and inhospitable to humans as the beasts residing here are acutely malnourished from being sealed away from what resides above.

That, and a poisonous Blood-Starved Beast presiding in an abandoned church.

Djura, a retired, rogue hunter, guards Old Yharnam as a sworn protector of the original strain of beasts.

Upon entry, you receive dialogue from a disembodied voice, warning you to return whence you came. Be wary of an approaching pattern of statues after turning right from the bridge. Lest you be gunned down for your failure to heed.

It is possible to befriend Djura, but the path is obscure.

If managing to find a Snatcher before defeating either Blood-Starved Beast or Vicar Amelia, you will be transported to a hidden location.

An unseen village named Yahar’gul.

Depending on the route you take, you’ll encounter another optional boss adjacent to Blood-Starved Beast called Darkbeast Paarl.

Upon defeating her, you are able to access Old Yharnam from the rear. Continue ahead, make it to the ladder leading up to his mounted position and the option to kill him has been nullified.

At least, until you express hostility to his homicidal children.

Are the Hunters included in the worship as well?

Some hunters, in particular, have conceded to becoming beast hybrids.

Gascoigne is one such example.

In this way, humans are renouncing God in the most basic fashion of self-veneration.

Ipso facto, the Church has proclaimed itself a religion.

Beasthood is godhood.

Blood has become the new currency.

Its symbolism, familiar yet poisoned.