Lest I fail to give credit where credit is due, this opinion is largely formulated on the speculation by such prominent Elden Ring/FromSoft Youtubers as VaatiVidya, Quelaag, and Smoughtown.
We're told in the base Elden Ring game that the "Crucible" is the primordial form of the Erdtree.
While, as a theater kid, I usually associate the word Crucible with a play from the 1950s that was literally about the Salem Witch Trials (a piece of history close to me as someone from Massachusetts) but was really a metaphor for Joe McCarthy's rabid attempted antiCommunist purge. Given the breadth of Miyazaki's influences, I would not be shocked if that play was also considered when picking this term, but the underlying metaphorical meaning works in both cases: Crucibles are basically pots that are used to melt down metal, which can be done to remove impurities but also to mix metals and create alloys.
As Tarnished Archaeologist argues, the Erdtree literally takes in the corpses of the dead and possibly grows new bodies like fruit, in a cycle of life and death that allows people to be reborn.
As a side note, such a system would normally satisfy a "balanced" system where life and death can work together, and I think Miyazaki's worlds are usually screwed up because some natural cycle has been disrupted by trying to excise the "bad" part and only have the pure good part, like light without darkness or life without death. But, as TA argues, the Erdtree we see now is not a physical object, but only manifested as pure faith, which means that the old practice of Erdtree burial probably doesn't function as it's meant to. Might the "golden" Erdtree thus only preserve life by preventing any semblance of death, letting people grow old and withered but never letting them die, while Marika's Age of Plenty was one in which death did come, but you could always count on being reborn in a fresh, new, youthful body?
We see in the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer a figure that is almost certainly Marika pulling what appear to be strands of golden hair from a (likely dead) body (Quelaag argues that it's a pregnant woman, and she and many others have pointed out that the clothing is reminiscent if not totally the same as that of the God-Skins - could this be the Gloam-Eyed Queen?)
The strands seem to extend in her hands and form her inverted arc - Marika's Great Rune - while she stands between two massive pillars that appear to be made entirely of corpses piled upon one another.
This gory gateway, which shows around it a dreary, violet sky, but through the gateway is a bright and golden one, has got a lot of people wondering: just what is this?
And so far, the most persuasive argument I've heard is that this is the Crucible.
The Crucible is said to be the "Primordial Form of the Erdtree," but what does that mean? Given that we're talking about spiritual objects, it seems possible that myths can bend and shape, and things can take on very different forms than how they were originally perceived/conceived. The Crucible is a place where all life intermingles and blends - this is why creatures like the Misbegotten and Omens (terms that one gets the sense were applied to them after a big cultural shift, while in a prior age they were considered blessed rather than cursed) are associated with the Crucible. Aspects of the Crucible - a set of Incantations you can get (often used by Crucible Knights) all involve manifesting some kind of animal aspect (or possibly a draconic aspect, but we're going to not get deep into dragon lore here).
And what signals "blending life together" more than a staggeringly enormous pile of bodies?
So, perhaps we could imagine the following:
Before Markia becomes a god, the Crucible is this massive, fleshy, bloody mass, where hybrid creatures are produced and where the dead are added to the pile.
Marika ascends, and she transforms the Crucible into a massive tree instead - the Erdtree. But this is still a physical object, and it actually performs the same function, but the process is hidden away in the Catacombs. Indeed, this kind of mirrors the real-world way in which we sort of hide the decay and rot of death by burying our dead, then allowing plants and fungi (and bugs) to "recycle" the bodies of our loved ones - all we see are the pretty flowers growing up above ground.
Then, however, the Erdtree is burned (in that "first cardinal sin") and all that remains is the faith in the Erdtree - a sort of illusion of faith that is only visible to those with Grace (we encounter NPCs who ask if we can see it, which implies some people do not). While the Erdtree is still there for those who believe in it, it presumably cannot function the way it did in the Age of Plenty or in the Age of the Crucible, and that is why by the time we arrive the world is in this terrible state of stagnation.
Another factor here is the "red gold" associated with the Crucible Knights - while Marika's ascension seems associated in the trailer with the "birth of gold," perhaps that is actually a sort of "pure gold" (though careful, because we're straying into "Unalloyed Gold" associated with Miquella). The red gold of the Crucible Era might be because it's associated with the blood and viscera that made up the Crucible.
As usual, the exact sequence of events is a little up in the air: Godfrey seems associated with the Crucible, but if it transformed into the Erdtree when Marika arose, then it would seem that his association with it would have to pre-date his ascension to Elden Lord, and would thus be more accurately when he was known as Hoarah Loux.
Likewise, we see art in Leydnell of a tree growing out of the Elden Ring, and another tree beneath the ring. Is this just showing the pure-spiritual and the older physical tree?
We also don't know why the original Erdtree was burned or when, exactly. I could imagine that it happened with the Shattering, which feels like the big punctuation in Marika's reign. But why? Well, if we imagine that the original Erdtree was just the transformed Crucible, and then Marika had children who were "cursed" as Omens after she thought she had fixed that bug, might she have decided to burn it down to eliminate any trace of the original Crucible, but in the process also break the entire basis of her reign's stability?
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