Penny Dreadful doesn’t just borrow from gothic horror. It goes deeper, reaching into the marrow of Western esoteric thought. The show is a layered meditation on spiritual warfare, ancestral trauma, forbidden knowledge, and the consequences of power misused. What it offers isn’t just fiction—it’s myth dressed in Victorian clothing. Every symbol, every story, every curse is carrying something older than the script.
This is a series where God and the Devil aren’t metaphors. They’re players. And the people caught between them—the witches, the monsters, the prophets, and the damned—are all telling the same story in different tongues: What does it cost to be free?
Vanessa Ives: The Body Battleground
At the center of it all is Vanessa Ives. Not just a psychic. Not just a medium. She is the spiritual battleground itself—an unwilling vessel caught in a tug-of-war between demonic forces and divine grace. She doesn’t dabble in the occult. She bleeds for it. The things that haunt her aren’t passing shadows. They inhabit her. And that makes her the perfect vehicle for everything the series wants to say about identity, submission, and spiritual power.
When Vanessa is possessed by Amunet—or when Lucifer himself tries to seduce her—it’s not spectacle. It’s initiation. The show makes it clear that possession, in this world, is not about head-spinning theatrics. It’s about consent. Will you bend your will to darkness? Or will you endure, and become something else? For Vanessa, that question is never theoretical. It’s in her flesh. It’s in her mind. And it’s always on the edge of tipping.
Joan Clayton: Witch as Midwife
Joan Clayton, the Cut-Wife of Ballentree Moor, is one of the most honest portrayals of a folk witch in modern television. She lives alone, outside the boundaries of respectability. She knows the power of herbs, blood, bones, and will. She doesn’t teach Vanessa spells—she teaches her discipline. And when Vanessa fails her first test, Joan doesn’t comfort her. She gives her truth.
Joan understands that witchcraft isn’t empowerment in the modern sense. It’s responsibility. It’s pain. It’s knowing that no one is coming to save you. That you either learn to work with the dead, or you join them.
Her murder at the hands of the townsfolk is a reenactment of what real witches—healers, midwives, women with knowledge—have faced for centuries. And her death is not just martyrdom. It’s a passing of lineage. When Vanessa buries her and takes up the mantle, she is no longer running. She is claiming power.
The Verbis Diablo and the Language of Binding
The “Verbis Diablo,” the devil’s tongue, is a fictional language in the show—but the principle behind it is very real. Words, especially sacred ones, have power. In many magical traditions, names are more than identifiers. They are keys. To speak the true name of a spirit is to command it. To speak a forbidden word is to summon what shouldn’t be spoken.
When Vanessa speaks the Verbis Diablo during her trances, the language doesn’t just affect the room. It alters the temperature of the narrative. What she speaks brings entities closer. What she says is ancient and inherited. It’s the idea that language itself can open doors—and once opened, they don’t always close.
The writers knew what they were doing. The series treats language as a magical act. That’s what spellwork is, after all. The word becomes action. The name becomes the thing. And those who speak without understanding pay dearly.
Victor Frankenstein: Playing God in Pieces
Victor Frankenstein is not a villain in Penny Dreadful. He’s worse—he’s a visionary without ethics. His quest isn’t evil in the traditional sense. He wants to conquer death. But what makes his story important is what he ignores: the soul. He creates life without concern for spirit. And that mistake, more than anything, is what destroys him.
The Creature, later called John Clare, is a theological problem. He has a body, a mind, and a hunger for meaning—but no place in God’s order. He reads poetry. He longs for love. And yet he’s treated as an abomination. His tragedy isn’t just that he was abandoned. It’s that he was never asked if he wanted to be born.
Then comes Lily. Victor resurrects her too, thinking he can control her. But she awakens not as a blank slate—but as a revolutionary. She remembers her trauma. She remembers her death. And she comes back not to thank Victor, but to burn his entire worldview to the ground. She’s a lesson in magical consequences: If you bring something back, you better be ready for what it becomes.
Dorian Gray: Hedonism Without Consequence
Dorian Gray is a cipher. He doesn’t suffer. He doesn’t age. His portrait carries the weight of his sins. And that makes him empty. He’s not the devil, but he’s something worse in the context of this story—a man without accountability. He is the embodiment of unchecked desire.
His immortality rots his soul. And when he meets Lily, he finally finds someone who mirrors him. But where Dorian runs from meaning, Lily demands it. Their eventual falling-out isn’t over morality. It’s over purpose. Dorian wants to feel nothing. Lily wants the world to feel everything she suffered. That’s where the occult symbolism hits: Dorian is stasis. Lily is revolution. And both are monsters made by men who thought they knew what power was.
Vampires and the Shadow of the Divine Feminine
The vampires in Penny Dreadful are not romantic. They are ancient, demonic, and intimately tied to Egyptian myth. The show blends Christian and Egyptian lore to craft something unique. Dracula isn’t just a monster. He is a dark god. And he wants Vanessa not just as a bride—but as a vessel for the divine feminine turned inward.
The show suggests that the root of evil here isn’t lust or hunger—it’s spiritual possession of the sacred feminine. The Nightcomers, too, are witches who have surrendered to a malevolent force. They are what Vanessa could become if she consents to the darkness. And she’s tempted, deeply, because power always offers safety first.
The show doesn’t treat evil as cartoonish. It presents it as seductive. And that’s accurate to real magical tradition: the idea that power offered freely is often the one with the deepest hook.
Ethan Chandler and the Divine Beast: The Werewolf as Sacred Protector
The werewolf myth, embodied in Ethan Chandler, isn’t just about shapeshifting—it’s about surrendering to the beast within. Unlike the elegant decay of Dracula or the stitched-together philosophy of Frankenstein, Ethan’s curse is raw and primal. His transformation isn’t controlled or ritualized. It’s violent, involuntary, and soaked in blood. But what Penny Dreadful does differently is root that transformation in divine prophecy. Ethan isn’t just a wolf—he’s the Lupus Dei, the Wolf of God. That flips the whole trope on its head. His curse becomes a calling. The monster isn’t here to destroy the sacred. He’s here to protect it. And that makes Ethan’s arc not just tragic, but holy. In a world full of predators wearing the faces of men, he’s the one beast you want on your side.
Tarot, Divination, and Destiny
Vanessa often turns to tarot, not just as a plot device, but as a compass. The cards don’t predict. They reflect. Every time she lays a spread, we get a mirror—not of the future, but of what she’s refusing to see. The Hanged Man. Death. The Lovers. Each card lands with weight, because it’s not about superstition. It’s about choosing to look deeper.
In folk magic, tarot is used less to tell the future and more to show you what’s in play right now. Penny Dreadful gets that right. Every draw is a spiritual checkpoint. Every spread is a test.
Names, Identity, and Magical Power
One of the most consistent themes in Penny Dreadful is naming. The Creature names himself John Clare, borrowing from a forgotten poet. Vanessa is renamed by demons. Joan is called Cut-Wife by those who fear her. Names here aren’t just titles—they’re roles. They’re bindings.
In magical practice, your name is your tether to identity and destiny. That’s why people use magical names, why spirits have true names, why saints have feast days and secret titles. The show honors this. It shows us how names shape action. How reclaiming or rejecting a name becomes a rite in itself.
This Isn’t Just Storytelling
Penny Dreadful doesn’t treat magic as aesthetics. It treats it as a moral problem. It asks hard questions: What are you willing to give up for power? What parts of yourself are worth protecting? And once you’ve crossed a line, can you ever truly come back?
For anyone who walks a magical path, this show isn’t just entertainment. It’s instruction. Not in ritual, but in consequence. It understands that real power isn’t in casting a spell. It’s in choosing not to. It’s in standing in your truth even when the world—or a god—demands your surrender.
And that’s what makes Penny Dreadful a masterwork of occult storytelling. It remembers that the greatest monsters are the ones who forgot their souls. And the greatest heroes are the ones who remembered theirs just in time.