While working on graphics for a Flash movie about the battle with Magus in 600 A.D., I became suddenly intrigued with the summoning circle Magus uses for awakening Lavos... in specific, it's design.
I hadn't really given a lot of thought to this particular artifact before (as I imagine most CT fans also haven't), but when I started looking at it closely and thinking about more I realized that
this design seems very atypical compared with most artistic conceptualizations of magic/summoning circles (like, for example,
this one from the Tales of Phantasia OVA). In fact, since most mystical floor-circles (regardless of purpose) are usually portrayed as little more than rings of glowing runic symbols and lines, Magus's circle stands out as very sharply different. Has any research been done into this, per chance?
Breaking the image apart, it has a
LOT of distinct qualities. The most blunt visual detail is what looks like four fire-breathing beasts (winged horses? griffons? some other kind of chimeric or mythic animals? It's hard to tell), one in each major quadrant. This in particular baffles me when trying to figure out what the circle's design would have been based on; why draw these four creatures as central aspects of a summoning device? What purpose could such representation serve? I've wracked my brain, but the best guess I could come up with is that it's an oblique reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but even that doesn't seem to fit very well.
Then there's the fact that its segmented in a rather compass-like way: four cardinal directions coming from the center, and then markings on the outer circle (where what looks like red runes are written) for four additional directions (IE: south-west, north-east,
etcetera). And if you think that's something of a leap of logic, look and see where traces of gold coloration are in the image. With the
sole exception of the firebreathers' eyes, the gold hues are (a) in the very center, where they form a diamond shape around a sole red dot (interesting? possibly meaningful? I think so.), (b) on the outer edges on the circle (primary directions), and (c) lines within the embellished middle of the circle (secondary directions).
Whatever the meaning of the animals is, I'd have to guess it has
something to do with this compass setup. For visual ease, I removed all the non-gold pixels from the image. Check it out:
Now I've always thought it kind of strange that Magus would be able to summon Lavos from way above ground with magic principles he'd learned himself, whereas in the Kingdom of Zeal it took bringing the Mammon Machine down to the ocean floor in order to awaken Lavos from its slumber. The (arguably) greatest magical device of the Kingdom of Magic... outdone by one man's summoning circle? Seems preposterous...
... but I wonder if there's any connection to this?
If we could look at the Ocean Palace from a directly overhead view... wouldn't it's layout rather strongly resemble this "compass" marked out in Magus's summoning circle, as well as some of the decorative elements near the center and middle? If we ignore the four mysterious beasts for a moment, the similarity is actually rather strong!
I won't say that I know enough about Chrono lore or summoning circles to make a full theory on this, but I figured I should get my thoughts and observations out so that they could be evaluated and other, more knowledgeable Chrono fans could see if there's anything useful or relevant. This summoning circle is very possible a critical piece of Chrono-series data that has yet to be fully explored, or so I think.
