CCRB RECORD No. 0092
Devil May Cry 5
Determination: Ambient — Corruption 1
The game's mystical vocabulary is Kabbalistic rather than Christian, and the Order of the Sword is only backstory.
Devil May Cry 5 is where the series' religious thread thins out, and the reason is worth recording precisely. The central object is the Qliphoth, a demonic tree that roots in Red Grave City and bears a fruit of power. The qlippoth are a real theological concept, but a Jewish one: in the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah they are the impure spiritual forces that oppose the sefirot. The final antagonist Urizen takes his name from William Blake's personal mythology. Neither is a Christian marker in the sense this catalogue requires, and the methodology is explicit that borrowed religious vocabulary must be Christian to count. What remains is Nero, who comes from Fortuna and carries the Order of the Sword as personal history, but the sect never appears as an institution.