At the beginning of times was the nothingness. Then came the Big Bang, the birth of an ever expanding universe...

One day, the Big Will, symbol of the Spiritual power, revealed itself to the world. Lightning spread into the cosmos, giving a kind of soul to everything it touched. This is, according to Saint Seiya, the explanation of the stars' influence on human's destinies : they are not lifeless things, but spirits that communicate with us... " Big Will " is written " God's Will " in Japanese ; humans could not understand its real nature. The Hyper-Myth (Saint Seiya's mythology, that is in fact a merging of all mythologies and religions of the world) says that every man who succeeds in joining his soul with the Big Will will become a god... this was the case of the Buddha, who reached the Nirvana after years of meditation, or of our Christ, reincarnation of his own father.

Only three gods have no human, but spiritual nature : Gaia (the Earth), Uranos (the Sky) and Ponthos (the Ocean). Zeus, Hades and Poseidon were the first three humans to reach the Big Will and be worshipped as gods. They assumed control of the Earth, of Kingdom of the Dead and of Oceans. The Big Will can be considered as a ninth sense, beyond the first eight senses, which includes them all. A god masters the famous Seventh sense, but also the Eighth (the Arayashiki), that allows him to go to the Kingdom of the Dead without becoming one of its subjects.

By their mastery of the Big Will, these gods have earned an immortal soul, but their bodies are mortal. They thus have to be reincarnated regularly (every 250 years is an average), and reach the Big Will again. So, Saori Kido became Athena only when she was told the truth, and when she felt she was mature enough to use her cosmo, just before the Sanctuary War. Of course you can say that in the manga, SHE tells the Saints the truth about her identity, not Tokumaru Tatsumi... but maybe she discovered the truth herself, just before the beginning of the manga... who knows ? Julian Solo became Poseidon only in the penultimate episode of the series... not to forget Shaka : his name speaks for itself (he is the reincarnation of Sakyamuni, the first Buddha), he was the first saint who reached the Seventh, then the Eighth Sense (it is the reason why the manga says he is the closest man to the gods, kami ni mottomo chikai otoko)... He is also the one Saint who knows the previous Holy Wars well.

We see no trace of Zeus in Saint Seiya, but he is there all right...The legend says that he disappeared one day, leaving the sovereignty of the Earth to Athena. It is also said that one will understand the meaning of life if one understands the reasons of his departure. Anyway, it is obvious in the manga, even if not said explicitly, that Zeus was reincarnated ...in Mitsumasa Kido, the founder of the Graude Foundation. After taking care of little Saori, he disappeared again to rule over the Heaven, as we can see while Saori is talking to him in the planetarium. Moreover, Mitsumasa Kido was a horny devil...Who else could have been able to seduce a hundred or so women in a few months ? (if one of you can do this, please mail me... I'd like to read your testimony)

The Holy Wars are battles between the gods, and thus between the human who worship them... The first god who got mad at all the others was Poseidon. Determined to conquer the whole world, he gathered the best warriors of the seven oceans and named them Generals (in Japanese, " Marina "). He offered them their Scales, armors of unknown origin (he probably created them himself) ; mythical monsters such as mermaids, or Kraken, were inspired by the shapes of these Scales, not the opposite. They were made of orichalcum, a metal which, according to a Selenian legend, came from a meteor fallen from Saturn and crashed on Atlantis a long time ago ; anyone who used weapons made from this metal was then invincible. War bursts out. Athena's warriors are soon beaten, as the goddess refuses to allow them to use weapons. All her warriors dying one by one, only young boys are left to rescue the world (in remembrance of this fact, only teenagers are allowed to become Saints)... Athena does not want to see them suffer, and decides to give them armors... She calls then on the alchemists from the Mu continent, which is located in the middle of the Pacific ocean (yes, that's right, Tao, in " Taiyou no ko Esteban ", comes from this very wise people), to forge these Cloths (so are the Saints' armors named). She designs them herself, inspired by the shape she saw in each of the 88 constellations. A Saint has thus to be in harmony with the constellation that inspired his armor to be allowed to wear it ; in other words, he must be protected by this constellation's main star. No one could therefore wear a gold cloth that does not match his own zodiacal sign...it is real luck that Seiya is a Sagittarius, just like Aiolos, his spiritual master.

These Cloths were made from Orichalcum too, but also from gammanium (an unknown alloy) and from Star Dust, which contains the Big Will and gives life to the Cloths...Mu, the Aries Saint, used twice this dust to strengthen the Bronze Saints' Cloths (when he met Shiryu, and when they arrived at the Sanctuary). Mu and Kiki are the last descendants of the people of Mu... This mythical continent was engulfed a long time ago during another Holy War, which opposed the Saints to the Titans, beings who caused the Big Bang, and who came on Earth probably by Hades' will.

The Cloths' power depends on their category (there are 12 Gold Cloths, 24 Silver cloths, 48 Bronze Cloths and 4 from unknown origin, Masami Kurumada having not exploited this feature). They can regenerate by themselves when they are damaged. Their healing is quicker if they stay in their Cloth Box, a big metal box that the Saints carry on their backs.

Athena then creates the order of the Saints. From then on, she is reincarnated on Earth just before the beginning of each Holy War in order to lead her warriors, gathered into the Sanctuary under the orders of the Pope (called kyoukou in Japanese, officially translated Monk-Emperor) who executes the goddess' will.

With the help of their Cloths, the Saints repulse the Marina to the oceans. A furious Poseidon gathers his warriors in his giant temple situated on Atlantis. Athena sends eight Saints there to destroy the temple, beat the Marina and sink the whole continent straight to the bottom ! The goddess then locks up Poseidon's soul in the North Pole, and sends a few Saints to guard it. These Saints eventually forgot their origins and became... the Blue Warriors, Hyoga's adversaries in vol. 13 of the manga, but also the God Warriors prototypes... Back to Poseidon : his following reincarnation settled a new temple just next to Cape Sounion, in Greece, on the bottom of Mediterranean sea (so the Main Breadwinner symbolizes this sea.)

After seven generations, Athena builds twelve temples in Athens area, to which she gave the name of " Sanctuary ". Then follows a chaotic period, during which the goddess and her Saints have to confront the Giants (this war was named " Gigantomachy ") . Athena herself had to intervene, in order to defeat the last of them, named Encelade, by jailing him under Sicily. The same legend says that Etna is the hole from which the giant's blazing puff rises up... following another legend, the prisoner of Etna is not Encelade, but Typhoon, who had been formerly beaten by Zeus.

After this war, the Saints have to fight the god Ares, friend of Hades. This fight was indeed the most trying... Ares, leading his four armies of Berserkers (so are called his warriors) has nearly beaten the 58 Saints 'in function' at this time (it equals the number of Saints in Seiya's generation). The goddess decides reluctantly, for the first and last time before the beginning of the series, to allow Libra's Saint to use the orichalcum weapons that are part of his armor...the Saints were then able to repulse Ares to the Hades ; it maybe caused a first indirect conflict between Athena and Hades (but the Hyper Myth gives no further explanation)...at this time Hades was wounded, but probably nothing more, by a certain Pegasus Saint, who looked like Seiya... the most clear-sighted of you have surely understood what it meant.

Peaceful centuries passed. Later on, a real hell, the little Death Queen island, was discovered in the middle of the Pacific ocean, on the equator. It used to be a rocky area of Mu continent, where Black Cloths prototypes, created by rebel alchemists, were stored. These Cloths are very powerful, even if they are not officially recognized by Athena... The island eventually became the only place to go for all men who were not able to become Saints, for they could easily obtain a Cloth there. The goddess decided thus to send a Saint to the island, in order to prevent them from leaving the place. This Saint had to be powerful, but at the same time not very important for the running of the Sanctuary, as he had to stay there forever. Successive Popes sent thus their most cruel warriors on the island, masked in sign of punishment for their crimes. Right, Guilty, Esmeralda's adoptive father and Ikki's master, was one of them... The mask was actually the island's seal : anyone who arrived there had to break it, or else he could never leave the island... but he had to kill the mask's owner before !

The rebel alchemists had not enough knowledge (nor time, for their continent sunk a short time later) to produce more than just copies of Bronze Cloths ; they reproduced Phoenix Cloth several times, as it was the most powerful one... Besides, Ikki is the first man in history to obtain Phoenix Cloth... No one before him had enough cosmo to channel Phoenix's energy...

1743 : in the Age of the Enlightenment, the prince of darkness comes back on earth.... Hades declares war on the whole mankind, just by disgust towards us. 79 Cloths had then an owner... which was a the highest number ever reached. However, almost all of them were defeated by Hades' warriors, called Specters, well protected by their armors, named Surplices. Only two Saints survived this terrible fight : Aries Shion (another descendant of the people of Mu), who will be named later Pope (the very one who will be killed by Saga some 230 years later), and Libra Dohko, Shiryu's future master, who Athena ordered to guard the tower (situated near the Five Ancient Pikes) in which she had locked the 108 Specters' souls...Hades came to take his revenge only in 1973... waiting to reincarnate in Shun's body, he perverts Saga's soul (which was somewhat insane already) and prompts him to take the lead of the Sanctuary, in order to prepare his coming. The Saints foiled his plans...the day when the Specters will invade the Sanctuary to neutralize Athena is coming near... most of our brave Saints will die in this imminent war, but they will do anything to protect their fellow humans, and their courage will turn them into gods...

Cyber Namida was created and designed by René-Gilles Deberdt. All rights reserved.