Homestuck and Gnostic Tradition

Nice primer. Two quick calibrations before we graft it onto the myth-engine:

1. It's tenet, not tenant. Unless you're implying the Demiurge is subletting the material cosmos, which; stylistically strong, ontologically shaky.

2. In Homestuck, "gnosis" isn't really a single pipeline; it's a routing problem. Multiple buses carry privileged knowledge, and the story keeps hot-swapping who gets root.

- Prospit dreams ≈ gnosis feed. Jade's handle telegraphs that she's the early knowledge bearer because Prospit/Skaia literally rains spoilers. When her dreamself dies, that uplink drops. This isn't the theme disappearing, but failover. This "packet loss" pushes "knower status" toward other roles (Seers, readers, and-awkward cough-authors).

- The Game as Demiurge. SBURB is a craftsman-god knockoff: imperfect world, perfectible through puzzle-ritual labor. Carapacian bureaucracy, Denizen bargains, and quest algebra all function as jailer protocols. You're meant to wake up to how contrived the lattice is, then leverage it (time loops, retcon, juju) rather than pretend you're outside it. No one is outside it. Hi.

- Yaldabaoth's job. Making Caliborn face the Big Fake Maker is on-brand. He doesn't accept the Demiurge's frame and instead murders the exam and graduates himself to Author/Antagonist. That's not anti-gnostic. It's recognizing the prison and deciding to run it. The shift you feel isn't necessarily "gnosticism goes away", but more like gnosis weaponized into authorship.

- Readers as archons (sorry). Early commands ("What will you do?") distribute demiurgic authority to the audience. Later, that power centralizes: first in Caliborn's "masterpiece," then in metatextual narrators who insist they're putting the story back "on the rails". Every time control re-concentrates, the comic asks whether knowing is the same as saving or dominating.

- Ultimate selves = immanent pleroma. The epilogues/HSBC move gnosis from prophecy to integration: you know the truth by becoming the set of your possibilities. I wouldn't categorize it under escape from matter, bur rather version control for souls. Push, merge, resolve conflicts, attempt not to brick the repository.

Where does that leave Jade? Not "theme discarded," but role reallocated. Space still seeds creation, but the privileged-knower mantle migrates to Seers, cheaters (Time players), the Audience, and narrators who think ethics is a UX setting. The gnostic question persists: Who gets to decide what's real, and who has to live in it?

TL;DR - The Demiurge is whoever currently believes they own canon.

is that why Ultimate Dirk is the one taking control of the narrative in the Meat timeline? because Yaldabaoth was originally his denizen, his challenge to conquer?

At last, a thread for stinky mythology nerds like me. Homestuck is buried deep into concepts of Gnosticism, alchemy and Jungian archetypes (which itself pulls from the previous two), and having studied that in an academic and historical context, I really wanna do a deep analysis of those themes at some point.

For now though, I will offer some perspective in relation to the Denizens. They are portrayed as both gods and monsters, cryptic beings that are both villain and deity, contrasted directly with Skaia, which is said to be conscious and making decisions, but described much more like a force rather than a being.

The portrayal of the Denizens as snake-like creatures is also no coincidence, as the aforementioned Demiurge, and Gnosticism's true god, Abraxas, are both portrayed as either serpents or having serpent-like features. In Gnostic Christian tradition, Abraxas was actually the serpent that lead Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of Eden, which is portrayed as ultimately good, as it gave humanity knowledge.

Abraxas is also often portrayed its legs being two snakes pulling it on different directions, demonstrating its duality aspect, which I'd wager was the inspiration for the concept of The Choice with the Denizens, and the Cherubs as a whole.

Humanity, as Oasis said, is a creation of the Demiurge, who is in fact one of the many deities below Abraxas, or, The God, as it is sometimes called (a concept that actually comes from Hermeticism but I digress). Interestingly enough, "world of lies" and "material world" are also referenced in the aspects of Hope and Rage.

See, Rage, on top of straightforward wrath, is associated with the uncovering of truth, or rather, the tearing down of lies, like how Gamzee seems to become aware of story he is a part of (all problematics of that aside). It is also directly associated with Lord English*, the one who killed Y'aldabaoth, the false god. Hope, on the other hand, being its opposite, concerns itself with imagination, dreams, convictions and magic as a concept. It is often discredited by both the Aspect holders, like with Eridan's insistence magic isn't real, or generally ridiculed, as with Jake, despite the demonstrable immense power it possesses. It is thusly no coincidence to me that Jake ENGLISH's Denizen is, ironically, Abraxas, thus equating faith and wisdom within the mythos of paradox space. This, too, has bearing in Gnosticism, not just with how religion and knowledge have been equated throughout history, but also how the figure of Jesus in Gnosticism is portrayed as one coming to unmask the Demiurge for its lies, revealing the true god, Abraxas.

*Though Caliborn's Aspect is Time, Rage's symbol is a direct reference to the Alternian clown cult, worshipers of Lord English. To me, this also reflects how Lord English is often referred to as a demon of some sort, with some branches of Gnosticism either equating the Demiurge to the devil and/or as the literal ruler of Hell upon being banished.

There is much more to be said about it. For one, Abraxas and Y'aldabaoth are also implied to be Karkat's and Dirk's denizens (maybe. I don't actually remember it that well lol), or how the Aspects of Light and Void also offer a dichotomy of knowledge and obfuscation, but I need to cut myself off before this takes my whole afternoon. I hope this was informative, and I shall return to this if asked any questions.

Thank you Oasis for the yapping opportunity.

(Autoresponder: Thank you very much for correcting "tenant" to "tenet". I often do this kind of mistake, English is not my native language. I will correct this in the original post as soon as we get the Edit function!)

i'd love to read about gnosticism sometime since it seems incredibly interesting and i always feel like a poser whenever the topic comes up wrt homestuck... @chthonikix if you have any book recommendations or anything please send them my way lol! but from my basic knowledge it seems pretty intensely tied into homestuck's core themes way beyond surface level allusions right? imo the absolute central thematic and ideological pillar of homestuck, tying every layer of it together, is the search for truth and meaning in artificial systems and escape from those systems. the coming-of-age stuff, metanarrative authorial stuff, the formats of sburb and paradox space, even things like the world seeming to work on strict computer logic, all tie into this. the gnostic aspects add another clear layer to this, a spiritual/mythological one, which helps sketch out homestuck's place as a 'modern creation myth' as hussie's put it before. homestuck is the story of a bunch of teens growing into adulthood, oppressed subjects escaping power structures, and humanity (and trollity and cherubity) achieving enlightenment, creating a 'true' world at the end and escaping the false world of homestuck (until the epilogues and hsbc which add a ton of complications lmao)

RE: @4nd7a

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is probably a good place to start, as it gives a good rundown of general Gnostic concepts and historical context surrounding it. It's available on the Internet Archive too, so it's pretty accessible.

However, and hear me out here 'cuz this is advice I received from many professors, I do actually and genuinely recommend Wikipedia diving if you know little about a subject before you jump straight to books. Get a good general idea, always remaining aware it does not make you a specialist, and then check the sources it offers. Google the authors, look at their body of work. Then, look what the works cited by those works and so on.

Of course, not everyone needs or wants to dedicate months of research into a subject they only have a mild interest in, and that's completely valid. Which is, additionally, why I recommend staring at some Wikipedia'ing. If you like what you see, Pagels' is a good start on actual literature about it. And if you want more... Well, you get the idea.

It's sort of interesting, because the Gnostic ideas and motifs are clearly there. But Hussie isn't... I don't know... Hussie doesn't seem to have the temperament or attitude of a scholar, but moreso a dilettante who just sort of gleans things for aesthetic purposes, the way Neon Genesis Evangelion aestheticizes Christianity. So we have to take Gnostic imagery used in Homestuck with a grain of salt.

But, at the same time, I don't think this means we need to reject Gnosticism as a means of analysis just because it is being used in a sort of bastardized form. In fact, as a practitioner of syncretic religion myself, Gnosticism might even work BEST when denuded of its historical baggage and boiled down to its most basic structural essence. I think that the parameters of the Gnostic universe, as applied to Homestuck, make Homestuck's setting, at least for acts 1-7, deeply relevant to our world experience.

After all, does the tyrant not sit on the throne of the cosmos, as he sits on his worldly throne too? Does the fundamental cruelty of the Alpha Timeline and the red red stare of Lord English not mirror the arbitrary, brutal cruelty baked into the natural laws of our own dog-eat-dog Hobbesian nightmare world, presided over by a vain, arrogant, sadistic god? Is American imperialism any different from Alternian imperialism, is the Condesce any different from our corporate tyranny, are the clown rulers any different from our Nazi president? Do we not all yearn for the light of a wisdom that is strong enough to dethrone even the proudest of pretenders to rule?

This is the Story--the Story of all Stories, the Story of Homestuck, the Story of all worlds. The struggle of generations, eons, kalpas, towards the dethroning of the Existing Rule so that the Light of Wisdom may preside, breaking all illusions that a truer, wholer, kinder world might come into existence.

Well, at least, that was how I conceptualized it in the leadup and aftermath of Homestuck Acts 1-7, since there seemed to be so much about "cosmic tyranny" and "using the power of ideas and the light of pure inspiration to create a better world." Now I'm not really sure if any of those themes are relevant to postcanon Homestuck.

On page 7, John dutifully follows the command to "retrieve arms" - displaying prank arms, held in a never-before-seen pair of arms.

While my friends have pointed out this is a continuation of abstract meta-humor from Problem Sleuth, I've noticed how relevant it is to my read of Gnostic themes. (not sure how much of my philosophy on that is borrowed from Buddhism and post-structuralism) From an early panel, it shows the conflict between the world that is seen, the illusions that the "hylic" are limited to, and the world of ideas, where truth resides.

@chthonikix thank you!! and advice taken lol

@magicmirror good analysis! on post-canon: i think most of that stuff is still very relevant. the complication comes from how post-canon intentionally muddies homestuck's ending, which for all its ambiguities is still pretty pure up to act 7, by intentionally having this beautiful freed new world immediately start repeating the mistakes of the old world. the kind of fight for existential control is still very present w/ ult dirk and such, though the gnostic aspects might be getting more strained there since i don't THINK there's an aspect in gnostic mythology where if a bad enough dude overthrows the demiurge he can just become the demiurge jr or whatever... i always took it as more of a commentary on the struggles of actually breaking from the past and building a post-revolutionary society, paralleled later by psycholonials in the same ways homestuck parallels problem sleuth

I would just like to contribute this tidbit I found which may or may not be coincidence, who even knows.

One of the major sources for of what we know about Gnostic cosmology is their greatest critic — St Irenaeus of Lyons, the author of “Refutation and Overthrow of False-Named Knowledge”, also known as “Against Heresies”. In one of his jabs against the cosmology of Valentinus, he proceeds to make fun of the Gnostic penchant for giving seemingly arbitrary names to the various aeons and archons and such, and in doing so St Irenaeus accidentally establishes a link between pumpkins and the void that we see all too well in Homestuck.

The relevant passage is Against Heresies I.11.4:

> ...nothing hinders any other, in dealing with the same subject, to affix names after such a fashion as the following: There is a certain Proarche, royal, surpassing all thought, a power existing before every other substance, and extended into space in every direction. But along with it there exists a power which I term a Gourd [cucurbita]; and along with this Gourd there exists a power which again I term Utter-Emptiness [perinane]. This Gourd and Emptiness, since they are one, produced (and yet did not simply produce, so as to be apart from themselves) a fruit, everywhere visible, eatable, and delicious, which fruit-language calls a Cucumber [cucumis]. Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same essence, which again I call a Melon [pepon]. These powers, the Gourd, Utter-Emptiness, the Cucumber, and the Melon, brought forth the remaining multitude of the delirious melons of Valentinus.

Problem Sleuth is Gnostic because it's about escaping a false reality ran by a malevolent godlike being. Homestuck is Gnostic because it took inspiration from everything Hussie could get her hands on.

For something of actual substance, look at how multiples of certain characters exist, and Ultimate Self requiring them to form together.