It occurred to me that this segment contains a canonical aspect placement that, if it were to be believed, would change the WGT.
What Doesn’t Change
The segment shows the aspects of the four kids (Light, Breath, Time and Space) each appearing in one of the slots of the Sburb logo.
This validates the theory that there are groups of four aspects and Light, Breath, Time and Space forms one of these groups. It is also evidence for the Light-Breath pairing. Light-Space is less likely but not impossible given the flash.
What Changes
The position of the first group changes according to the Flash. Time is now on the lower-left, etc.
We’d have to change Prospit/Derse to be the horizontal, not vertical axis, or go back to calling it Inner/Outer.
The third group changes to accomodate this: Doom, being a destruction aspect, goes with Time. The placement of this group is speculation. There aren’t many canonical hints to go by.
We leave the second group the same, as it’s placed by the Wizard’s Glyph.
Since pairings are now decided horizontally (see the placements of Time and Space), Heart-Hope and Rage-Mind are now pairings.
Why Change It
Now, you might suggest we ignore the Glyph and switch the aspects of the second group until we get the same placements as before but I feel there’s good justification for the new placements:
Heart is now on the same quadrant as Light (Direction). Heart is not entirely unlike Light. It has its theme of Greek philosophers and then there is the denizen Yaldabaoth (has a Sun for a head, appeared to Heart players). Also, it could be said that Heart directs the mind.
Mind is on Space’s quadrant (Creation). That works too. Mind is the synapses of the frog which is where the story takes place (see the Doc Scratch segments). That is very spacey.
Time is on Rage’s quadrant (Destruction). While most of what we know from Rage is biased by Gamzee, who is a Bard, the name Rage itself indicates destruction so it’s a good match.
I was pondering on the relation of Mind to Reason. While many theorists might classify Mind as Reason for obvious reasons, this could be argued to not be present in the comic. If Mind is Reason, why are all intellectual-types on Light? What we do know is that Mind stands for decision.
As you can see in the Wizard of New Zealand’s glyph (which this blog was named after), Mind is listed as Efficient Causes (means).
Efficient Cause is in fact the closest (out of Aristotle’s Four Causes) to what we nowadays refer to as causality. In fact, this page canonically links Mind to causality:
And if I was a Seer of Mind in particular, synaptic causality would be my specialty.
Following this page, story events are shown happening inside “synapses”.
The wizard’s glyph lists Understanding (knowledge) as a characteristic of Mind. Knowledge is being aware of facts. Facts are stored in the memory. Memory belongs to the mind.
It’s unclear to me whether the Wizard of New Zealand meant something with expression but Thought is definitely involved in this too.
Anyway, this is interesting because it’s now ambiguous whether Terezi’s power has to do with causality or memory. They are practically the same as far as Sburb is concerned.
In conclusion, Mind is Reason in the sense of “looking at possible outcomes”. It fits the Sherlock Holmes archetype (and by extension Terezi’s Justice motif). It is even logical in that logic deals with possible worlds.
However, Reason in a general sense is distributed among the aspects. Different aspects represent different fields of study.
What about Light? [Passive/Derse]
Light is thought to be Passive/Derse and therefore in the position of Rage. While Light is not Rage, the WGT recognizes that aspects placed in the same position may share characteristics.
Intellectuals may refer to themselves as “men of taste“. So Taste might not only apply to Rage. Same for Art in the sense that books can be art. We have thus an science x art dichotomy. Light stands for literature and thus art. For comparison, Doom stands for science (see: Sollux being a hacker). Light is more artsy than sciency.
Additionally, Light is in the melancholic square while Mind is in the choleric square. Choleric is befitting of the more practical, detective-like behavior of early Terezi. Melancholic befits writing books.
What about... Void? [Passive/Prospit]
Void is Passive/Prospit along with Space and Heart.
Theoretical physics belongs to Space because the subject matter is space. Similarly, Greek Philosophers (Dirk mentions them a few times) are Heart. Such philosophers tend to ponder on virtue ethics (see glyph) and Plato talks about the platonic realm which might be the literal meaning of Heart.
It has eluded me why Void is robotics (Equius) and programming (Roxy). Maybe it could be a Derse thing instead. Perhaps some would disagree on the placing of Void[1]. It could just be the way it is.
One hint we have is Rose’s conversation.
Note that Rose mentions a physicist [Space] when talking about fundamental ideas (the conversation also relates to Void) -- which makes sense since both Space and Void are origin / creation aspects in the WGT -- and she does so under a Light (symbols; aka patterns[2]) perspective.
The other hint is Roxy’s power.
if you want your powers to reach their full potential youre going to need to become more familiar with the fundamental building blocks of ideas and how they translate into more complicated thoughts and forms
It would seem that forming something out of abstract building blocks (and thus “creating something out of nothing”)[3][4] is Voidy. This, in turn, is not unlike picking out mechanical pieces to build a robot.
[1] It could arguably be Passive/Derse or even Active/Derse.
[2] Thus relating to the Formal Cause, like Rage.
[3] This is what Void is according to the Beforus trolls.
[4] Void and Doom both having programmers in them might be a hint to our Void-Doom pairing.
The Wizard’s Glyph Theory has an alternative to the popular inversion theory.
It is an extension of the WGT theory that combines aspects with the Qabbalah.
The sephirot is what the Jewish call the emanations of God in the Qabbalah. Some posited the sephirot to have a darker counterpart: the qliphoth. These are the Tree of Death to the sephirot’s Tree of Life. They are shadows of the sephirot. They also relate to hell.
Inversion: Rose
Rose went through qliphotic inversion switching from Binah [Light] to Satariel, a qlipha of concealment inhabited by Lucifuge (reverse of Lucifer; "he who flees from Light"). Rose is away from the Light, thus grim dark.
It would make sense for the Horrorterrors to be related to the qliphoth.
Inversion: Alt!Calliope
Besides Rose, Calliope is an example of a possible inversion.
Alt!Calliope is a much broodier, darker version of Calliope. This hints that a possible inversion occurred.
In the Kabbalah, Space=Malkuth is a pretty clear correspondence. Malkuth is Earth.
This is where it gets weird. The qlipha of Malkuth is Lilith. The myth of Lilith is that she refused to be subservient to Adam and then got cast away from paradise leaving Adam with Eve.
Alt!Calliope is from an alternate timeline that got doomed [i.e. cast away from paradise] because she dominated a man, Caliborn. In this analogy, Caliborn and regular!Calliope are Adam and Eve, the first players. Remember that Homestuck is meant to be a creation myth.
In other words, Alt!Calliope went through qliphotic inversion to Lilith and thus acquired the role of Lilith. She becomes an anti-Muse.
Inversion: Jade and Jane
While I am not entirely convinced what Jade and Jane went through was actual inversion, this could be argued the following way:
Jane gets a trident. This is typical of demons and the qliphoth is hell.
The qlipha of Chesed [Life] is Gha’ag Sheblah, the Smiters. Jane has a trident for smiting.
Lilith, being the qlipha of Malkuth=Earth, is linked to wild animals. Jade is grim bark.
It makes sense that Jade wouldn’t get a position as prominent as Alt!Calliope from the same qlipha. This is because she isn’t a master class.
[Edit] Inversion: Gamzee
There is a good case to make that Gamzee went through qliphotic inversion or was always inverted.
He is a juggalo, a group based on a rock band. Satanists are known to go to rock bands. There was that one song by a rock band about Sitra Achra. Sitra Achra is another name for the qliphoth. Gamzee is thus inverted by extension.
The qlipha of Hod [Rage] is Samael, the Poison of God. What comes to mind is the slime supor once referred to as poison.
This description applies to him:
Samael is the dark intellect that can be perceived as madness, [...] that is outside the frames of reason and the conventions of civilization. - Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic
A Re-interpretation of Aspects Based on Qabbalistic Elemental Associations
As aspects have not been revealed any further since the ending of the comic, an interesting page provides nonetheless a new take on them if we consider the elements to be part of the qabbalistic interactions forming the aspects.
A page of the Golden Dawn with the aspects corresponding to each sephirot and the elements drawn for reference.
The obvious assignment of elements is to take the first aspects shown, then, say that Breath=air, Time=fire, Light=water and Space=earth. The only non-obvious permission we take is that of saying light is similar to water.
Now, we go back to our assignment of aspects to sephira.
Formerly, we took Keter to mean Time. This is to play on the obvious contrast between Space and Time. But what if there was a contrast between Space and Breath? One is air, the other is earth. It doesn’t then take rocket science to place Breath as Keter, the highest and most aethereal aspect (close to the all-ness) while Space remains down-to-earth below.
This leaves us with fire forming a triangle of aspects: Time - Blood/Doom - Hope.
Water forms another triangle: Light - Life - Rage.
What about earth? Earth, standing still, doesn’t cross other aspects.
Because Doom is a leftover aspect, it can be argued whether this or blood are the firey aspects. Followers of bkew theory can take Doom to be firey so that Blood is left for Space (earth), leaving the Breath vs Blood dynamics somewhat. But it’d be similarly interesting to interpret Doom as a dark earthy aspect. Void, being a special aspect, qabbalistically speaking, due to void not being technically a sephirot, is also fitting for the earth triad.
It could be further argued whether Hope and Rage stand like this. Previous analysis took Rage to be on the left as that’s where the pillar of severity is and Hope on the right in the pillar of mercy. Having this new angle of analysis, we can say that Rage is a water/severity while Hope is a fire/mercy aspect.
This leaves earth as: Space - Doom/Blood - Void.
Air goes downwards: Breath - Mind (choice) - Heart.
A while ago, a grand theory on Homestuck classpects was made: the Wizard’s Glyph Theory. Unfortunately, the old blog (wizardsglyph.tumblr.com) was deleted. With the blog deleted, it seemed for a while that the WGT had disappeared without a trace. Don’t worry, I decided to note down the theory in this perspective.
What is the Wizard’s Glyph?
In order to explain this, we first have to mention a minor celebrity: the Wizard of New Zealand.
He is a college student who somehow got official documents to declare himself a wizard. He is a minor celebrity in New Zealand.
This dude has also written a whole cosmology. His cosmology culminates on the wizard’s glyph (it’s quite a complex diagram so it takes a while to digest):
The glyph is based on, among other things, the four temperaments:
The classical Four Temperaments were already at the back of my mind as they so closely resembled the ‘ideal types’ adopted by psychologists and sociologists when they categorised social and psychological phenomena. I was stunned when I discovered that the self-funding scientist Pavlov had dared to conclude his studies with a categorisation of the nervous systems of the dogs he had spent years conditioning, as Phlegmatic, Choleric, Melancholic and Sanguine. Magical thinking based on the oppositions between Inner and Outer and between Active and Passive or receptive, seemed to fit in well with my explanation of the ‘kinematics’ of the observable world “out there”.
This is all written in his website:
http://wizard.gen.nz
What does this have to do with Homestuck?
Everything. Let’s look at the glyph once more:
Once we replace Senses for Rage and Soul for Heart, it becomes evident that the glyph describes four Homestuck aspects. We didn’t even have to change Mind and Heart: they were already there.
Example: Dirk deals with Moral-Ethical Reality; he worries about the effect his actions can have on his friends. Jake has Hope powers that can directly alter the Ultimate Reality. Gamzee is a clown so obviously he is all about Art & Play, he tastes his slime drug, and he worships the saviours of his religion.
Adding to that, Homestuck is full of wizards. This makes WGT and Homestuck a good fit.
Aspect Quadrants
It doesn’t stop there. The first thing to note on the glyph is that it divides things in four. This division is based on the temperaments.
When you divide things in groups of fours, the result is quadrants. This was already featured in the comic in the form of troll romance.
The second thing to note is that the glyph has two axis: an active/passive and an inner/outer axis. As shown in later charts, inner/outer was taken to be Prospit/Derse. That’s because Prospit and Derse are concepts that already exist within the comic.
click for chart
(There is a small reference to Buddhism’s wheel of life.)
Time Cube
WGT is much like the website Time Cube. Time Cube famously proposes that we divide things into four: it absolutely hates duality. The WGT is Time Cube-approved.
The Calmasis (Fourfold Cherub) Theory
The theory went that since everything is divided in groups of four (troll romance, the wizard’s glyph), there would be four cherubs. The chess game between Calliope and Caliborn and Tavros’ mention of a bigger bad were to be foreshadowings of this. This did not turn out to be the case. As such, this is only an what-if.
Evolution
Positive feedback loops can be observed clearly in biological growth and organism evolution, the most obvious instances being the cloning of cells and reproduction of organisms.
We proceeded to analyze the wizard’s other articles. What we take from this one are the concepts of positive and negative feedback which as the wizard explains are necessary for evolution. They fit into the aspects of Life and Blood respectively.
Jane, what with the scene where she makes the plants in her planet grow, is positive feedback. Karkat, with his negative personality, is negative feedback. His leadership was about making sure the trolls didn’t go out of control and started killing each other.
This dichotomy is also seen in the behaviour of Cherubs. Furthermore, the Cherub juju is green and red. As such, the dichotomy of Life-Blood occupies an important position in the WGT.
We then add Void and Doom into the mix. Normally, to many people, Doom would be opposed to Life-- Life creates life and Doom destroys life. Not so here. The similarity is explained by noting that they are all in the same group (Life-Void-Blood-Doom) and besides, Void is the one aspect that has created things ex nihilo.
Process Theory
Light and Breath are some of the most abstract aspects. This is evident once we pick the wizard writings on process theory.
Aristotelian Four Causes
According to the Wizard’s Glyph, the Heart-Mind-Hope-Rage group of aspects can each be assigned to one of Aristotle’s Four Causes (see The Cosmology below). This helps understand each aspect.
The Cosmology
The full cosmology of Sburb is thus found.
click to see chart
Aspect Quadrants II (Groups)
We therefore got three groups of aspects.
Group 1: Space-Time-Breath-Light (Process Theory)
Group 2: Heart-Mind-Hope-Rage (Four Causes)
Group 3: Void-Doom-Life-Blood (Evolution)
For example, let’s look at group 3. Void is responsible for creating matter: Roxy makes the matriorb from nothing. Void is the Big Bang. The matriorb then gives rise to life. Life goes through evolution; this is where Life, Blood and Doom come in. As such, each of these four aspects fit into a narrative.
Troll romance could be considered to be a fourth group.
Aspect Quadrants III (Meta-Quadrants)
As we said before, the Wizard’s Glyph divides things along an active-passive and a Prospit-Derse axis.
This means a given aspect could be Passive/Prospit (Phlegmatic), Active/Prospit (Sanguine), Passive/Derse (Melancholic) and Active/Derse (Choleric). Remember the aspect wheel?
So... on which slot does each aspect go?
If you look again at the Wizard’s Glyph, you’ll see that Heart-Hope-Rage-Mind are already placed. Is this placement correct? What about the other aspects?
Creation-Growth-Direction-Destruction Aspects
In order to distinguish the different meta-quadrants, we came up with the idea that they meant creation, growth, direction (control) and destruction.
For example, Void fits into Prospit/Passive, the “creation” quadrant (see matriorb). Life fits into Prospit/Active, the “growth” quadrant (see Jane’s planet growing with life).
In this sense, Life is similar to Hope and Breath as they all fit into Prospit/Active. Void is similar to Space and Heart as they fit into Prospit/Passive. etc.
I feel that this helps elucidate the meaning of Prospit and Derse. For example, we all know that Prospit is related to creation. But that’s not all Prospit is about; hence the difference between Passive/Prospit and Active/Prospit.
Time, Doom and Mind are Active/Derse, “destruction”, aspects.
Passive/Derse deserves its own blog post. We interpret Light as giving direction to other aspects. So even though it does not spell destruction like Doom and Time it is still a Derse aspect. Derse is not all about destruction.
Temperaments, Anima and Animus
If you haven’t read about the temperaments yet, this is a good time to take a read. There are many websites around explaining them.
It also helps to know about the animus-anima. According to an old theory in psychology, anima means feminine traits and animus means male traits. This is important because that’s where Homestuck’s passive-active dichotomy originates. Passive is synonymous with anima. Same for active and animus. Of course, men can occupy passive roles, etc. We don’t have to take this old theory to the letter.
I think the Chess pieces are good examples of this concept. They work very traditionally, probably because they are game constructs. The Queen, female, is passive, whilst the King, male, is active.
Take the White Queen; she just gives up her reign and lets others do their things. If you read the temperament page, this could be taken as Phlegmatic or, in other words, Passive/Prospit. In fact, she is from Prospit.
The White King, however, does some fighting despite being from Prospit; he is Active/Prospit.
The first four kids also easily fit into a four-temperament ensemble.
The Eightfold Tower
Classpect analysis everywhere have found that the aspects have both literal and metaphorical meanings. This is old news. What the WGT has found is that there are eight layers in total (what the Wizard of New Zealand calls the Seven-Stage Spaceship). While most of these can be ascribed to aspect powers, there are layers for troll romance and troll institutions. That’s why they were given such space in the comic.
pic1
pic2
Sburb requires players to build such a tower and cross seven gates. Coincidence?
The Conspiracy
Piercing all the hints together, we get the full conspiracy.
Class-Aspect Pairs
Until now, the WGT has been silent on classes. But what classpect theory worth its salt doesn’t have its own opinion on the +1/+2/+3 slots of classes? Thus, a controversial theory was invented: that each class has a corresponding aspect.
Take for example the Doom aspect. It’s about death. But so is the Prince class. Now take Void. Void is about creating from nothing. This has similarity to the description of the Page class; Pages start with nothing and have to become something.
In the Eightfold Tower, one of the layers corresponds to human/troll institutions. Now let’s take an aspect, say, Blood. What institution best represents Blood? This would be the military: coincidentally, Karkat even shows interest in the military. The military, a Blood institution, creates Knight individuals. This links aspects and classes together.
Class-Aspect Spiral
click for chart
The class-aspect pairs theory, along with the theory of aspect quadrants, culminated on the Class-Aspect Spiral.
Note: this contains an update where witch was switched with sylph upon noting that Sylphs are spirits of the air according to Paracelsus (and therefore linked to Breath) and that the witch class is supposed to be very active.
Aspect Kabbalah
click for chart
It is known that Homestuck makes references to gnostic literature. Therefore, the WGT has devised a system that combines aspects with the qabbalah.
The chart makes much more sense if you adopt WGT’s interpretation of Life and Blood. In qabbalah, Chesed (Life) and Geburah (Blood) are opposed and represent the forgiving and punishing side of God, respectively, and so do the pillars of Mercy and Severity. This then fits into the idea that Life and Blood are positive and negative feedback.
The word Chokhmah itself may be broken into two words -- koach ("potential") and ma ("what is"). Thus, Chokhmah means "the potential of what is", or, "the potential to be.
Light (Binah) and Breath (Chokmah) are the most abstract aspects and naturally occupy the top, Chokmah being action and potential energy* and Binah --understanding-- placing constraint and form on this energy.
Tiphereth is a path that connects and balances many of the sephira**. This, I think, fits with the imagery of Mind. Doom could also be understood as being about balance and of course there aren’t any sephirot left.
* This is also what Breath means in WGT.
** Each of the circles--except for Void-- is called a sephirot in kabbalah. Da’at is not technically a sephirot.
