What She-Ra Has to Say About Religion
When I first watched She-Ra, I was taken with their lack of conversation regarding religion in the world-building. This is something typically at least commented on, even if only in passing. And at first it seemed She-Ra was the same. They described the First One’s buildings, those typically built for She-Ra, as “temples”, and others in the world describe stories about She-Ra as both myths and legends. These terms are typically semi-related to religion, but can often be related to more secular ideas as well. But when we dig into the themes, subtle ideas, and more implicit elements of the world-building, She-Ra actually has a lot to say about religion.
The primary dichotomy throughout the show is the battle that’s present between magic and technology. When Adora leaves the Horde, she is met with a world of magic. The Princesses in Bright Moon each have their own power, which the Horde is constantly fighting against. When we see the Horde and the Rebellion fighting against each other, the primary weapons the Rebellion has is magic, and older more simplistic weapons like bows and spears.
In contrast, the Horde is filled with machines. They unleash bots in their battles. Their troops are clothed in strong armour, and their weapons are lasers and guns. Clashes between the Horde and the Rebellion are marked by this strong difference in what they have to work with.
These differences continue in the headquarters for each side. The Horde’s place in the Fright Zone is marked purely by machines. There is metal everywhere, with smoke and fumes which fly up into the air. Hordak’s sanctum is filled with even more machinery, where he works away at new machines and bots for the battle against the Rebellion. This is where we first meet Adora. And so this stands in stark contrast to when she leaves her home in the Fright Zone and travels, instead, to Bright Moon, the headquarters for the Rebellion.
Bright Moon is brightly coloured and spacious. But it’s also completely unmarked by machinery. Instead, there are pictures large on the wall, or sculptures of important figures lining hallways. Where the Fright Zone has machines, Bright Moon has art.
This is a subtle way of continuing the strong differences between machinery and magic. The locations themselves are marked by the differences in their approaches to war and life – one filled with machines, and the other filled with sparkles and magic.
The First Ones also have a strong presence with machines. The original colonisers of the planet left strong metal buildings dotted around the landscape – rising in the middle of forests. The technology is greater than anything the current inhabitants are aware of. Its important to note that frequently in shows, there ends up being a reveal that the magic everyone is used to using is actually just ancient tech.
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke sketched out three primary adages. The third states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But this reveal never happens in She-Ra – the magic remains something entirely and utterly separate from the technology of the outside worlds.
In fact, the First Ones attempted to use their technology in order to control and ciphon the magic of Etheria. The technology was being used against the magic of the world. The only Princess to be fully technologically knowledgeable, Entrapta, sees connections between magic and technology, but only through the way the First Ones used their tech to control the flow of the magic – the magic remains something other-than. But more than that, its something that the tech finds a need to control and dominate.
The final season of She-Ra puts the competition that exists between magic and technology into a greater arena. The ultimate antagonist of the series, Horde Prime, is the ultimate in technology the primary characters have faced. Entrapta frequently comments on how intricate the technology of Horde Prime is. His space ship is all clean strong lines, with a pure white of metal and unnaturalness – highlighted by neon green. His clean sharp lines are set in contrast to the ways the Rebellion is forced to hide in trees and bushes – the messiness of nature pitted against the sharp and clean of technology. In a fun side note, Horde Prime also echoes a stronger version of the First Ones in his own colonial ways – where the first ones colonised and used their tech to control a planet, Horde Prime colonised by completely destroying the planets.
Its in Horde Prime that we see the slow building of magic and technology’s battle against one another take a religious turn. The entrance of Horde Prime also marks the entrance of more overt religious language. His army is marked by clones, who he tells he made in his image. He refers to his followers as “little brothers” and “little sisters”.
Horde Prime voices that his intention behind his destruction of much of the universe is due to a need to bring peace. Violence simply to bring peace is seen as completely acceptable because the end result is what matters most. Throughout most of the early interactions with him, he maintains a fully calm exterior. His calm demeanor, the bright white of both him and his environment, and the language and phrasings he uses brings forth a similarity with Christianity. There is emphasis on purity in his language and world.
The calm and clean world of the Christian-Horde stands in stark contrast to the wild magics of Etheria. The need the First Ones found to contrain and control the magics of the planet demonstrates just how strong and uncontrollable the magic really appears. When talking about the magics of Etheria, Madame Razz reveals how the magic is everywhere and in every thing.
Whenever the characters are around magic, we see it as floating glowing balls. The way they float about in the air demonstrates the wild nature of the magical energy – its existance simply in the air the way it floats everywhere possible in the world.
So we have a strongly controlled nature of technology, set in contrast to a wild magic. In Season 5, Adora and her friends discover the weakness of Horde Prime, in the episode “Shot in the Dark”. During this exploration, the squad realises that the ultimate weakness for Horde Prime is magic. Not because magic is overly powerful, or that magic has some hidden tech inside it, but because he cannot understand magic.
Connected to this is the secondary theme of the show: the dichotomy between power and love. The importance of power and it intense presence in the antagonists of the show start from very early, with Catra and Adora’s abusive mother figure, Shadow Weaver. She insists on the importance of power for overcoming all things. When they were growing up, Shadow Weaver favours Adora over Catra due to Adora’s inborn power that had yet to be tapped – an essence Shadow Weaver could sense. But Catra was wholly normal. She has no secret powers, no magical talent. She is simply Catra. With no power, she is considered a weakness to Adora in Shadow Weaver’s eyes. She is a distraction.
Hordak and Horde Prime also hold power over all else. Like Shadow Weaver, Horde Prime sees weakness in the relationships between the Princesses and the others. Love for Adora is a bargaining chip to control Catra and Glimmer to get more information from them. When Horde Prime chips Catra, her love for Adora is described as painful and restrictive. She needed to be “saved” from the love because it was a distraction. Once Catra is saved, Shadow Weaver repeatedly comments on how Catra’s presence around Adora is simply a distraction to Adora unlocking her full power potential.
But its actually the love between Adora and Catra that saves everything. After breaking the sword, Adora had assumed she wasn’t able to access her power anymore – was no longer able to transform into She-Ra. But when all hope was lost, Catra was severely harmed and taken by Horde Prime, and they were surrounded by the enemy – it was the love for Catra, and the promise of love between them – that she would bring her home – that let Adora transform into She-Ra.
Her new transformation embodies the love she carries for her friends: her new outfit carrying elements of those she cares for: Glimmer’s boots, Bow’s heart, and Catra’s headdress. Its not a need for power alone that allows her to trasform and fight – its the love for those she’s fighting for.
And in the end, its the love shared between Catra and Adora that literally saves the world.
The characters in a ruthless pursuit of power cannot comprehend how love is able to beat power. In the end, its not Horde Prime being weaker than the Rebellion that was his undoing – it was his inability to comprehend the strength inherent in love.
Love wins in the end, not because of the typically anime trope of friendship and love always winning, but because that’s how magic works. The reason why Horde Prime’s weakness is magic is because the power he seeks is streamlined and contained – magic is wild and full of love.
Horde-Prime is the ruthless Christian-colonial power – one who comes to a land with no understanding of the typical experience for them. But if Horde-Prime represents Christianity, then what are the Princesses?
Anthropologist E.B. Tylor coined the idea of “animism” which he understood as a worldview in which spirits are found in humans, but also in plants, mountains, rocks, and other natural forces. Recently, religious studies scholar Graham Harvey has challenged this, and instead understand animism as “relational epistemologies and ontologies”. This means that Animism refers to a way of living in a community of persons, most of which are other-than-human. In this understanding, it is not just that animism refers to the fact that natural elements are considered people with a force of its own, but rather that the importance is on the community fostered and experienced. Its the love shared that makes something Animism.
The Princesses in Etheria are Animists. Not just because the magic is described as being in everything – connecting the humans to the other-than-humans on the planet. They’re animists because of the importance of love – their relationship and community is what gives them strength and makes them who they are.
In the end, it is this love that defeats Horde Prime. Its the community fostered between the characters, and their connection to their environment, that defeats him. Its the love for others, and the love for the world they live within, that gives them strength to fight against it all. This is why the end of the series is filled with so many people speaking words of love.
It’s also nature that triumphs over technology. The love for the nature of the world, the magic that is everywhere, consumes the technology of the would-be coloniser. In the greatest demonstration of the Animist triumph over the Christian-tech is the transformation of Horde Prime’s ship into a giant tree, which remains floating in the air above Etheria.
She-Ra is the greatest depiction of the Animistic citizens fighting off their Christian would-be colonisers. This is, perhaps, one the most powerful commentaries She-Ra can make on religion.
She-Ra teaches us that love triumphs – not because of some deus ex machina mechanic of animation, but because it’s the connections we forge with one another that makes us who we are, and which give us strength. We are only strong because we have one another. Instead of being the various colonial powers of the First Ones – who tried to restrict the magic of Etheria – and Horde Prime – who tried to destroy it – we should simply let the magic around us be free. In having the magic around us free, we allow ourselves to be connected to the environment around us, allowing us to forge communities with everyone around us. And this connection makes us strong.