Fullmetal Alchemist: The Gate

[branchandroot]

The symbolic connection for all the theorizing that comes next is the eye. The eye on the Gate is definitely the Eye of Providence, glory and all, but the way it's drawn also harks to one of the ways of drawing the ten sephirot, as concentric circles rather than a vertical tree¹.

So, let's suppose that the Gate is basically Keter: the changeover point between the knowable and the unknowable, and the mingling point of the two from human perspective². Thus, what Ed and Izumi see, in the Gate, is the sum of the knowable. Izumi seems to also perceive the existence of something further, albeit without being able to know it. Ed really doesn't yet, which is not at all surprising. Despite his brilliance, he has very little life experience when he encounters the Gate and is extremely focused on the practical.

Let us further say that the theory of human souls' unity with the divine is in operation in this 'verse. This would explain the way souls pass through the Gate and yet do not stay there and cannot possibly be called back in the same form. The Gate creatures could then be explicable as the remnants of will (seishin), the free will whose existence preconditions the potential for evil as well as good. Keter encompasses those, as it encompasses all aspects of the knowable, but they are not signal expressions of Keter. Rather they are leftovers, as it were.

Given the encompassing nature of Keter, it makes a certain amount of sense that the Gate is concerned (to anthropomorphize) with balance and that it could move, or allow to move, life/energy (inochi) in order to keep the Tree, which presumably encompasses all universes, balanced. And, in the more liberal and optimistic branches of theology, it also makes sense that it would indeed be "in every heart".

We could hypothesize that the Gate opens, in cases of human transmutation, purely to show the path to the soul, which is what the alchemist is seeking, and that the creatures are simply opportunists who take anything they find, upon opening, that is not sufficiently guarded.

Kind of like malicious, mystical kender.

This is, needless to say, completely apart from any theory involving the FMA mangaverse, which clearly has a very different concept of the Gate and its denizens being developed.

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Footnotes

1. For a short, accessible discussion of both these models and the sephirot in general, see this page at Learnkabbalah.com.

The fact that there are multiple concentric circles within the Eye on the Gate (possibly as many as ten, though the image from the Stigma magazine spread, the only image I've seen with enough resolution to count, shows nine) lends some weight to the notion that, from the start, Arakawa deliberately draws a parallel between the Gate and access to or witnessing of divinity, which the anime carried on in its own variation.



2. Keter is a much-debated concept. A few sources that may give you a start on it are at Judaism 101, Kabbala Online, and a cautious exploration of Wikipedia articles.