This post is a follow-up to my Serious Steven analysis. If you haven’t seen it already, go ahead and check it out.
In this video, I somewhat glossed over the mural and the design of the temple overall, but I wanted to take a deeper look into the temple, as it’s a hot topic in the Steven Universe fandom even to this day. As much help as the Steven Universe Wiki has been with making Gemology so far, I want to avoid it for this analysis, because some of the points made about this temple are unfounded nonsense, for lack of a better term.
From the trivia section of the temple’s wiki page:
The “Inverted Pyramid” Temple is also a Delta; sacred geometry symbolizing a woman’s pelvic triangle, which relates to the show’s frequent Diamond shapes that on a deeper level also represent the womb.
This is total nonsense.
I appreciate everyone who takes time to contribute to any wiki, but I don’t like when fan interpretations like this are presented as trivia or facts. So again, I’m not going to be using the wiki for this discussion. I will also not be using any evidence presented outside the show, i.e. answers given by the crew in interviews or on social media. However, I will be using all of the information that the show presents. In Gemology, I try to look at each episode on its own and include information presented from earlier ones. If I spent each video talking about future episodes, I would run out of things to say in those future episodes. Here, and in future deep-dives on this blog, I’ll use all of the info that I can gather from the show.
All of that out of the way now, let’s start. One thing I’d like to find out at first is the timeline for the construction of this temple.
When Was the Inverted Pyramid Built?
I use “built” despite the fact that the pyramid seems to be partly manifested by the gem recovered at the end of Serious Steven, although there is some rubble that remains after the rest of it poofs like a gem monster would. Keep in mind that a portion of the temple was constructed, while another portion is the physical form of a gem.
The obvious glaring hint is the Era 2 emblem on the floor of the temple. On a first watch, this just looks like some more triangle imagery like the rest of the temple, but it is more recognizable after seeing the emblem. Of course, this means the temple was erected between the shattering of Pink Diamond and the event that corrupted the remaining gems on Earth.
This isn’t unreasonable. After the shattering, Homeworld continued to occupy Earth to continue the war and carry out experiments such as the Cluster. It can be assumed that this pyramid was constructed at that time. The purpose of the pyramid, however, is somewhat of a mystery.
What Was the Pyramid Built to Do?
This may be an unsatisfying answer, but I don’t know, and I don’t think we ever will know. Something to note is that the pyramid was build after the shattering of Pink Diamond and before the corruption blast from the other diamonds. During that time, it could have been anything. Maybe it was just a temple; a memorial to the war that happened in those fields. I can confidently say that I don’t believe it was built as a dungeon to trap whoever entered it.
A common theory about this mural is that it depicts the event of the corruption blast from the diamonds. It mirrors shots from other episodes, of hands reaching up to the sky from Earth, and hands reaching from above, presumably the diamonds, with a single gem (the one recovered at the end of the episode) remaining in her temple. I don’t believe any of these murals, or the rest of the temple for that matter, were here before that event. Since much of this pyramid is the manifested physical form of a gem, it’s only logical that this gem was corrupted as well. This can easily explain the murals depicting events that seem to have happened long after this temple was abandoned. It can explain how the layout inside the dungeon seem to serve no purpose, especially in a time of war.
Corruption causes a gem to lose all sense of purpose. You can see this in any gem monster, and in other gem-powered things such as the desert glass and possibly the communication hub. Whatever directive that was given to them when they were being grown was erased, leaving them beastial and deranged.
There are still questions I can’t answer about this pyramid without sounding deranged myself, so I will leave them as they are. I can’t confidently say what the temple was built to do before it was corrupted, and I can’t explain why the Crystal Gems seemed surprised to find it in the field. I will leave that to someone else who might have a better guess than me.
However, I don’t believe time travel is the answer to any of this.
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