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.

