One Piece: Mary Geoise might be connected to the secret of the Celestial Dragons' magic

As One Piece enters its final saga, fans of the pirate-themed tale are introduced to the World Government’s upper echelons and their esoteric, mysterious abilities. The Five Elders are the highest-ranked Celestial Dragons who serve as the world’s top overseers on behalf of Imu-sama. They can't only morph into Yokai-like monsters, but also access to a range of ominous supernatural powers.

The Elders can communicate telepathically from afar, as well as travel enormous distances through magical teleportation that uses pentagram-like circles as a medium. This method, called “summoning through the Abyss”, also allows each Elder to summon his fellow colleagues to his position. As seen in the Elbaph Arc, the law enforcers of the World Government, the Holy Knights, can travel through the “Abyss” too.

In addition to this, the Five Elders are immortal—living for hundreds of years without seemingly aging—and can regenerate from any harm, including injuries such as decapitation or having their bodies crushed. The source of these powers remains unclear, but a fascinating theory from Reddit user @Deicide-UH speculates that they are generated by Imu in the secret of Mary Geoise, the World Government’s capital city.

Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers from the One Piece manga up to chapter 1146.

Magic in One Piece may be the result of Imu's darkest scheme

A set of mysterious and esoteric powers

The Five Elders summoned on Egghead (Image via Shueisha)

When the Five Elders use their magical abilities, fiery black energy, and lightning—somehow reminiscent of Haki—erupts from their bodies and the surrounding area. As seen when Shamrock, Gunko, Sommers, and Killingham appear on Elbaph, the same also happens when the Holy Knights emerge from the teleportation circles.

Though the precise origin of these supernatural power is still a mystery, it’s reasonable to associate them with Imu-sama, the criptic figure known to be the supreme leader of the World Government as the true sovereign of the Pangaea Castle’s Empty Throne.

At least, this was allegedly implied when Saint Saturn Jaygarcia died as a result of Imu revoking his immortality. In that occasion, Imu singled out Saint Saturn from afar, using some obscure technique to unleash black lightning and dark energy from Saturn’s body, ultimately culminating in an explosion that reduced Saturn to a scorched skeleton.

Saint Saturn's death in One Piece chapter 1125 (Image via Shueisha)

With that being said, while Imu’s connection with this power set of immortality, regeneration, telepathy, and magical teleportation seems a given, what remains unclear is their nature.

These abilities and their resulting black lightning and flames may stem from a combination of Devil Fruit powers and Haki. Broadly speaking, Haki can be considered as the ability to harness and control one’s spiritual energy to perform superhuman feats, a trait that—with the due differences—is quite common in modern fantasy fiction.

One Piece’s recent events have disclosed that Haki can be stored and reserved for later use, surviving even its original owner’s lifetime for someone else to wield in the future. This was seen when Joy Boy, the legendary first pirate to ever sail the seas, compressed a portion of his Conqueror’s Haki within a knot and gifted it to his friend Emet, telling him to unleash that Haki when the time was right.

According to @Deicide-UH’s hypothesis, the concept of “stored Haki” may hold the answer to understanding the strange magical abilities exhibited by the highest-ranked Celestial Dragons.

The Abyss and Mary Geoise

The Abyss summoning in One Piece chapter 1140 (Image via Shueisha)

As this Reddit user noted, the Abyss summoning can only be cast by those who have a certain mark. People with the mark can be summoned through the signature circles, while unmarked individuals can’t be transported through the circles in any way.

In the One Piece world, those who are enslaved by the Celestial Dragons are marked with a symbol called “The Hoof of the Soaring Dragon”. It is branded upon each slave’s body, and serves to mark them as individuals less valuable than normal humans.

@Deicide-UH’s theory connects these elements to speculate that this mark of slavery is linked to the one used to perform the Abyss and is also the source of the power used to regenerate and live without aging.

If this assumption holds true, the black flames and lightning unleashed by these abilities would be nothing more than the concentrated spiritual power and life force of the countless slaves—likely numbering in the hundreds of thousands—whom the World Government oppressed over centuries.

The symbols on Saint Sommers are suspiciously similar to the Celestial Dragons' mark of slavery (Image via Shueisha)

Lurking in the secret of Mary Geoise as the world’s unseen ruler and puppet master, Imu-sama would drain and collect the spiritual energy of the enslaved. This stolen energy would later be redistributed to Imu’s most trusted subordinates, allowing them to gain esoteric powers.

So, beneath its magnificent architecture and revered status as the “Holy Land”, Mary Geoise would, in fact, serve as a macabre facility to harvest the energy stripped from the slaves.

After all, Haki, at least in its Armament and Observation forms, is a power dormant in all creatures of the world, so it’s anything but impossible for random slaves to possess it unknowingly. Given that Haki is a form of spiritual energy, the idea that someone can extract and redistribute it doesn’t seem too farfetched either.

A theory aligned with the established themes of One Piece

Mary Geoise's Pangaea Castle in the One Piece anime (Image via Toei Animation)

This would also explain why Imu allows the non-fighting Celestial Dragons to be around. All Celestial Dragons are revered as “gods” for being the descendants of the monarchs who established what is now known as the World Government. But most of these nobles are spineless inepts, only capable of abusing their privileges to conduct an opulent lifestyle. They have no special abilities, and bring nothing to Imu.

Going by the aforementioned theory, Imu permits these aristocrats—otherwise completely useless for the Empty Throne’s ruler—to persist. It is because their habit of enslaving commoners for servitude in Mary Geoise would serve as a disguise to hide this realm’s true purpose from the rest of the world.

This would align with the recurring motif of Mary Geoise presenting outward wondrousness while concealing a grim reality inside, a duality already emphasized in Sabo’s flashback of the latest Levely.

The slaves in Mary Geoise (Image via Toei Animation)

Outwardly, it would appear that the slaves are brought in Mary Geoise to fulfill the demands of the nobles, but in truth, they would eventually be used by Imu to extract their spiritual energy, later to be shared among Imu’s faithful servants. While the theory doesn’t specify how this process occurs, it speculates that Imu’s transformation into a humanoid yet monstrous creature is part of the mechanism.

Perhaps, Imu’s mysterious ability stems from a Devil Fruit which is the evolved version of Big Mom’s Soul-Soul Fruit. This Paramecia-type enables the user to manipulate souls in order to animate lifeless objects, turning them into creatures known as “Homies”.

Big Mom was proud of being the ruler of Totto Land, which she considered a miniature world where to realize her ambition of creating a family comprised of people of all races. Imu may possess a Devil Fruit similar to Big Mom’s Soul-Soul Fruit, but much more powerful, just like Imu’s domain is much greater than that of the former Yonko.

Imu's monstrous transformation in the One Piece anime (Image via Toei Animation)

While the Soul-Soul Fruit can only steal the life force of those who are afraid of the user, and can’t be used to infuse souls into living besides the user themselves, Imu’s hypothetical Devil Fruit would enable the villain to channel the stolen spiritual energy into devoted allies to empower them.

Granted, some fans may not favor this idea, as it would draw evident parallels between Imu and Kaguya, the ultimate villain in Naruto. In Masashi Kishimoto’s story, Kaguya ensnared the world in the Infinite Tsukuyomi subjugate people and link them to the God Tree in order to extract their chakra. She later used it to boost herself in the final battle against Kakashi Hatake, Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, and Sakura Haruno.

The Five Elders have unreal regenerative powers (Image via Shueisha)

It’s also possible that the teleportation and telepathy used by the World Government’s top dogs are merely the result of the Ancient Kingdom’s technology, seized by Imu and their faction centuries before the present One Piece narration.

The extreme development of this technology would make it appear as magical. Even the Five Elders’ self-regeneration abilities could be explained by genetic engineering, stemming from that advanced technology.

Still, having Imu harvest people’s spiritual energy to bolster their subordinates would be much better. In that case, by defeating Imu, the protagonists would effectively free the world from oppression, a conclusion that resonates with the “Sun God” narrative and the freedom-driven themes that One Piece has been leaning into as of late.