"Everything feels afraid sometimes. Sure, maybe it's not as complicated or existential as our fear, but it's real. And there's what, twenty billion chickens in the world? A few billion pigs, cows. How many of them are dying of old age? All that terror, it has to go somewhere. So it does."
"And when something formed out of an animalistic fear of the slaughterhouse reaches out to people-"
"Things get weird. Yeah. It gets mixed all up with human neuroses. Bodies, gore, y'know, that nagging worry that deep down we're just electrified meat squeezing air at each other."
- Gerard Keay and Jonathan Sims, MAG 111
The Flesh is one of the Entities. It is the fear of mutilation and having your body changed or destroyed as well the animal fear of being slaughtered for meat. It is also connected to insecurity and self-hatred, specifically regarding one's own body image.
It is thought to be the newest of the entities, born from the fear created by the increase in the industrial farming of animals for meat. In humans, it manifests as bodies, bones, muscles and flesh being twisted, reshaped, and butchered, it also employs the thought of being nothing more than meat. It often employs Christian imagery, such as a cannibalistic version of Eucharist and using a Gnostic church as a ritual site.[1][2]
| ATTENTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!! This article contains information from later episodes of The Magnus Archives and may contain major spoilers for the setting and plot. Continue at your own risk. |
Episodes[]
Statements[]
- MAG 5: Thrown Away (Teeth)
- MAG 14: Piecemeal (Angela)
- MAG 17: The Boneturner's Tale (The Boneturner's Tale, Jared Hopworth)
- MAG 18: The Man Upstairs (Toby Carlisle)
- MAG 30: Killing Floor (Tom Haan, slaughterhouse)
- MAG 49: The Butcher’s Window (Jared Hopworth)
- MAG 58: Trail Rations (Eustace Wick)
- MAG 72: Takeaway (John Haan)
- MAG 90: Body Builder (Jared Hopworth)
- MAG 103: Cruelty Free (Monster Pig)
- MAG 115: Taking Stock (Meat Grinder)
- MAG 130: Meat (The Last Feast)
- MAG 131: Flesh (Jared Hopworth)
- MAG 171: The Gardener (Jared Hopworth, Domain)
- MAG 178: The Processing Line (Domain)
Other appearances[]
- MAG 4: Page Turner (Partial, Sanskrit poetry book about dying animals)
- MAG 20: Desecrated Host (Suspected, cannibalism)
- MAG 35: Old Passages (Partial, Sanskrit poetry book about dying animals and a tunnel built by Robert Smirke)
- MAG 62: First Edition (Partial, Sanskrit poetry book about dying animals)
- MAG 91: The Coming Storm (Partial, The Boneturner's Tale)
- MAG 199: Seeing it Through (Angela, domain, mentioned)
Characters[]
- Jared Hopworth: The Boneturner. An avatar of the Flesh with the power to manipulate meat and bones, has a large body with extra limbs and organs taken from his victims.
- Toby Carlisle: Covered his apartment with meat.
- He has the same last name as Benjamin and his wife in MAG 58. It is unclear if they are related.
- John Haan: Cannibalistic murderer who formerly owned a fast food restaurant, rumored to have used human meat in his food.[3]
- Tom Haan: Nephew of John Haan, found in the slaughterhouse where he was firing a bolt gun into his head.[4]
- Eustace Wick: Cannibal who posed as a guide on the Oregon Trail.
- The Monster Pig: A manifestation of the Flesh in the form of a massive pig.
- An unnamed avatar: Ruler of the Processing Line, a post-change domain of the Flesh.
- Angela: A Flesh avatar who was mentioned in MAG 14. She is mentioned to have her own domain in MAG 199.
- An unnamed tall woman who was described as having arms that bent backwards.[2]
Artefacts[]
- The Boneturner's Tale: A Leitner version of The Canterbury Tales that can grant people the ability to manipulate bodies.
- Unnamed book of poetry about dying animals: A Leitner written in Sanskrit. Drops small animal bones that have been warped into unnatural shapes.
- The Meat Grinder: An antique meat grinder that can regenerate lost limbs by grinding them.
- An Introduction to Higher Anatomy is a Leitner that based on the title may be aligned with the Flesh.
Locations[]
- The slaughterhouse: A seemingly endless maze of hallways, conveyor belts and industrial machinery related to the manufacture of meat products.[4]
- The takeaway: Restaurant owned by John Haan, where he fed his wife's body to his customers.[3]
- The butcher's shop: A normal seeming butcher's shop where Jared Hopworth kills and mutilates victims from the Ukrainian mafia, taking their body parts or feeding them to a meat "pit."[5]
- The gym: Owned by Jared Hopworth. Targeted toward body builders with feelings of inadequacy. Their bodies are changed beyond recognition in order to achieve "perfection."[6]
- The Mortal Garden: Jared Hopworth's domain in the post-Change world. A field of flesh and bones, with people planted as flowers that grow with their fear.
- The Processing Line: A domain in the post-Change world ruled over by an unknown avatar.[7]
Ritual[]
The Flesh's ritual, The Last Feast, involved a pit of meat under a Gnostic church in Istanbul.[2] It was thwarted by Gertrude Robinson, who used explosives to destroy the church and the pit. Gertrude had 8 years to stop the ritual, and it helped her understand that conventional explosives could disrupt some rituals.
Connections with other Entities[]
- In MAG 20: Desecrated Host, Father Burroughs is tricked into cannibalism when taking part in the ritual of Eucharist. Father Burroughs was under the effects of the Spiral or The Web at the time and had recently met with Breekon & Hope, agents of the Stranger.
- The Flesh attacked the Magnus Institute, a stronghold of The Eye. The relationship between the entities is uncertain, as the attack was orchestrated by avatars Elias Bouchard and Jared Hopworth, rather than the powers behind them.
Trivia[]
- At some point during development The Flesh's name was going to be Viscera.[8]