#spn lore

section one: angels and supernovae

what i ended up doing was taking a list of the accepted classifications of supernovae*, and a seperate list of accepted classes of angels in the show, and i compared them. i sorted my angels into 6 tiers, and i compared their canon relative strengths to the light curves of supernovae (showing how bright they get, essentially). for this scenario, i imagine "wavelengths of celestial intent" to operate on a similar mechanism to waves of light, so the brightness of supernovae directly relates to the power and amount of angels released from the star

*an important thing worth mentioning for this section is that there is a type of supernovae known as type Ia. if archangels were not canonically older than the universe, this would be their attributed supernovae. however, given their age, i had to come up with an alternate theory to explain these supernovae, as they do not produce any angels. archangels are not discussed in this, because i don't have the mental capacity to go back to what possibly existed before the universe.

type Ib - this is my category for the grigori. these are the ones that were in heaven and got banished. these guys were the first ones to show up on earth so that's why they get this one. the light graph for this is not as bright as Ic, but it does last longer (hence the being on earth longer part).

type Ic - these are my seraphs. these are slightly more powerful than grigori so they get one that is slightly brighter. both these types are very very similar too (the only supernova difference is that one has helium being released, the other does not. this is relevant later in my chemistry section).

type IIn - these are my "high tier angels". that's not helpful as a category so i gave them my solid middle ground option. these are neat because there's some infrared activity going on, which makes me think it's some freaky angel thing i am actively choosing to ignore for the moment because i dont understand infrared enough (i may come back to this later).

type IIb - this type involves two types of angels. my reasoning for this (hear me out); their light curves have two peaks. i gave the smaller peak to the healing angels (rit zien, according to the wiki), and the second (and bigger) peak to the intel angels. the first peak is pretty normal, but the second peak is like a type Ib peak [this has to do with naomi and the intel angels having a similar deal as grigori; both morally shunned by various people].

type II-L - "low rank" angels. technically its max brightness is higher than IIb, but im chalking that up to the sheer amount of low rank angels that were formed at one time making that happen, despite being low power level.

type II-P - cherubs. nothing special here; weakest brightness = weakest angel class

section two: angel grace and angelic abilites

i'm assuming anyone reading this has some basic knowledge of chemistry. essentially you have protons, neutrons, and electrons. turns out, there are also these things called neutrinos that appear from things like supernovae or nuclear reactions. science is kinda sketch on them still because they're hard to replicate and actually measure on earth, but they are a thing. a huge amount of these get realeased from supernovae and my thinking is that the angels have properties similar to these neutrinos. exhibits to follow;

exhibit one: angel radio. angels can hear it, humans cannot. which must mean it gets communicated through some other means than just sound waves. solution ? neutrinos. we as humans have successfully used these particles to communicate through something like 800 feet of rock. obviously this could only be picked up by specific instruments, but the logic is there.

exhibit two: angel teleportation/speed. when a supernova occurs and the core collapses inward, it functions a bit like a black hole; it kinda sucks everything into it except for neutrinos and light (because their speeds are so very very similar). therefore, i can make the conclusion that neutrinos have a relationship to angels moving at near the speed of light to teleport and occasionally move(there are some scientific problems here in which neutrinos have been recorded at faster than the speed of light, which shouldn't really be possible. for supernatural, it's just another angel quirk in this universe, perhaps)

exhibit three: angel grace. i've taken a bit of a liberty here and thought of these like a recurring nova (small classical nova that reoccurs periodically). something in the angels from their supernova origins allows them to be able to do this (im not hung up on the details. its fantasy after all. again, i might revisit this later).

section three: catch-all on angel chemistry, speculative biology, etc.

point one; when a supernova occurs, the result is almost always one of two things. either it turns into a neutron star (second densest thing in the universe), or a black hole (y'all know these). there's a trend that i found with these angels. the weaker angels trend toward forming neutron stars, and the stronger angels trend toward forming black holes. this makes sense, because bigger stars typically form black holes over smaller stars, and you would theoretically need a bigger star to hold more powerful angels. there's exceptions to this (like to everything...). number one, cherubs have a tendancy for their stars to result in black holes on occasion. i'm assuming this has something to do with forming a large number of cherubs at once, so you need a bigger star to house them all. number two, you have seraphs and grigori occasionally forming neutron stars over black holes. this i'm attributing to forming a noticably less number of them at once than usual. therefore, smaller star needs less space. my "high level" angels can form either result at more or less random; again, this would be based on power level and number formed from one star.

point two; there is, in the actual astrophysics of supernovae, an energy transfer issue. when the star collapses into itself, there's a massive amount of energy required to make that happen and as of right now, we have...no concrete idea where it comes from. we do, however, think it's related to neutrinos (aha, angel grace ??? anybody ???). my theory is that the angels are the source of this energy. they pull it back into the star to slingshot themselves out of the star's orbit, and then once the star explodes, they ride that shockwave like surfing until they reach heaven.

point three; angel chemistry (this part was difficult, so be kind to me if there's mistakes). angels are weird, and i have reason to believe they may be partly a silicon based species (or, they are not, and the silicon simply fused into the star core like it does in real life. for my purposes, let's say that angels have a silicon component to their biology). i've found that the only type of supernova that doesn't result in angel formation is the type that has a silicon spectra (we can detect it, which means it doesn't get absorbed or fused). by that logic, i'm assuming the angels have to be somewhat silicon based. additionally, i have a theory that there's a sweet spot to layers used by the star when forming angels for their powers. having a helium spectra present (we can see helium given off by the star) results in a grigori. this means that having that one less layer has some sort of effect on their power levels. meaning that when we see hydrogen spectra given off from all the type II supernovae, that results in weaker angels because they're missing an additional layer (there are some issues with this that i don't know enough about atomic spectra to fully work through. i think it may have to do with some forbidden spectra that i don't fully understand. i may revisit later).

point four; elemental chemistry and the formation of heavy metals. so we know in the show that the boys use various metals to defeat/harm supernatural creatures (bronze, silver, etc.). the most important of these (for this at least) is iron, and here's my theory why. a while ago i made a post about iron being a "pure" element and that's why it works. i would also like to make this addition; type Ia supernovae produce iron-56 as a result of nuclear decay (iron-56 is the most naturally occuring isotope of iron on earth). it came to earth from when the planet formed, as the iron was floating around in a gas cloud that condensed into our planet. if you remember from earlier, type Ia is the only type of supernova that doesn't produce angels. essentially, it has so much happening that instead of forming a neutron star or black hole, it quite literally explodes itself apart until there's nothing left. my thought is that this amount of energy is too much for the angels and tears them apart. their angelic grace gets left to dissipate into the rest of the star, and when iron-56 forms in the core and enters the universe, it works so well against spirits because it has trace amounts of angel grace in it (same goes for the other metals that they use). this also explains the Si showing up from these stars, because instead of being in the angels, it's just in the universe.

theres a few other points about types of stars relating to angel strength before they even go supernova, but it's not super relevent to be truly honest. it doesn't tell you anything that i haven't already explained (although i am willing to explain it further). some of the other iron on earth comes from meteorites. they've related fallen angels to meteors in canon, so i am going to apply the same logic and say that when their grace gets altered in the fall, it imbues this iron with grace, and you get the same result.

if you made it to the end, congrats, you are now my new favourite people. questions are accepted and please PLEASE tell me if i screwed something up with my science. i am not an astrophysicist or a chemist; i'm just a molecular biology major with way too much time on my hands and unmedicated adhd

a bit of canon

first, let's agree on exactly how we view the cage. as you probably know, on wiki fandom, the cage is listed in both the "places" and "objects" sections, but I want a more comprehensive approach.

so, I suggest referring to the fact that the cage, in a global sense, is a phenomenon that arises as a result of eternal imprisonment with the help of Chuck's magic (Enochian symbols). in other words, the cage is a state of confinement alone with constant torment, and because of it a place is formed. A prison. That's what we saw a few seasons later:

but is that all? how can the cage be interpreted if it's both a state, a place, and a space too? let's figure it out.

let's start with why time goes differently in the cage. as is the case with the usual levels of Hell, this was mentioned repeatedly in the series itself: time stretches, and one earthly year turns into several hellish/even a century.

we see a similar effect when we talk about black holes: gravity in them is so strong that time actually stops. of course, gravity itself is more a convention than a real force, but according to the theory of the singularity, gravity tends to infinity exactly in the center of a black hole.

however, in the case of black holes, we can detect them, even if they are very, very far from our solar system (look at sum random simulation or a digitized image of a black hole through a telescope, and you will see an accretion disk that gives it a "glow"). this doesn't resonate too well with the idea of the cage, that is almost impossible to find:

but who told us that the cage is a three—dimensional space and object?

may sound corny, but believe me, it changes a lot.

imagine that angels, such as in SPN, actually exist. if they are complex, multidimensional beings with their own structure and energy, not similar in properties to ours, then how will we see them? in fact, there is no way. if we talk about them, without resorting to the whole story of the vessels, we, three-dimensional creatures, do not realize even a part of what angels really are.

therefore, to keep such a creature locked up, without the ability to move freely in space, we need something more complex than, ahem, an ordinary cube. what about the tesseract? or even a penteract?

just look at this... ugh

many people have probably already explored this, or heard about this, but didn't quite understand. that's why I recorded my screen with several objects from "4D toys", so it would be more interesting and easier for ya'll to perceive. :)

since a tesseract, or hypercube, consists of layers of many 3D cubes, this is exactly how it will be perceived by our eyes:

(I'm also pretty sure that the cage, being smth "material", most likely rotates around it's axis, and if we saw it from the outside, it would be smth similar ig.)

this happens because our 3D world, like our 3D perception, cannot capture the fourth plane, and being in it, the 4D object seems to "disappear". the next example is more illustrative:

this is what happens to a dodecahedron from the perspective of a 2D person when it's in his dimension, while you and I know that the object has not disappeared.

the same with this 600-faceted thing. beauty ^_^

well we've more or less figured out the behavior of multidimensional objects that we can't fully comprehend. to summarize, the cage might look like a 5D cube in the picture below:

but what about time and condition of the person trapped in it?

as I already said at the beginning of the post, the cage is not just an object and/or a place. this is also a state of eternal imprisonment. this vision explains the canonical moment when Crowley used Enochian cage spells on Nick to imprison Lucifer in this body forever.

but there's other existing theory that can explain such oddities.

do y'all remember Schrodinger's cat, and how it's in superposition? (which, in turn, is based on the wave function, quantum entanglement and decoherence.) well actually, the cat isn't alive and dead at the same time. the observer's paradox is that we, as an observer, find ourselves in only one of many possible outcomes. in our outcome, the cat may be alive, while in the other it's dying. that's what multi-layered reality theory says. observation doesn't change the position of particles, because particles don't care we are looking at them. we just catch only one result out of all possible ones (a multi-world interpretation).

and here's the point: if there's no such thing as time in the cage at all, which makes it seem to people it's going too slowly, then all possible outcomes of events will never happen. perhaps not for us, lol. but, for example, for more complex creatures. for example, for Lucifer. no, I don't want to say that it makes the reality of the cage simply. I want to say that, in that case it's hell. really. experiencing nothing in one permanent "now", like a constantly frozen frame, he will probably just stop feeling anything at all (no time = no sounds, light and etc). it will merge into one big "nothing", even if a vacuum isn't really empty. "virtual particles" are constantly being born and disappearing in it. but still. all this may well be the reason why the cage is so unbearable. yes, Lucifer is used to enduring this, somehow, but remember about Sam's mental state and imagine the scale of his horror.

overall, this is more my own artistic interpretation of the cage based on what I've already told you above. but there remains one last, important point.

the infinity of the cage

remark: infinity is not a number. it's a word that means endless growth. for this reason, infinity cannot be achieved, one can only strive for it.

what does it mean? well, if we talk about infinity as a property of our universe, then the universe isn't necessarily infinite in the usual sense. infinity can mean a cycle, and here's why:

this is an approximate model of what our universe might look like (yes, a donut). going up we'll return from below, going to the right we'll come to the left, so we'll never return to the same point. in fact, this is a limited version of infinity, which, in my opinion, perfectly match with the concept of the cage.

what do we have in general?

as I promised, now we'll answer (or try to) some questions and inconsistencies from the spn canon. so:

why does the cage have multiple entrances/exits if, according to the prophecy, it only opens at St. Mary's Convent? answer: as we found out together, the cage is a complex multidimensional space/object created as a result of magic that shackles the freedom of a being under it's influence. we cannot fix the accurate coordinates of the cage, because without magic it wouldn't exist at all as a "cage" or a box with chains (XD). that's why it can have more than one entrance and exit. this may also be the fault of the alchemical mistakes btw.

how was Azazel able to "talk" to Lucifer while he was still in the cage? answer: referring to the same difficulties of 4 or more dimensions, in the 3D world we will not be able to recognize such an object/phenomenon completely, we'll only see it's constantly changing parts as it moves through space-time. so I suppose that Azazel, being a 3D demon like humans, just managed to catch the right moment and choose the right place where he "came into contact" with the cage and Lucifer in it.

how can the cage contain an entity "inside it" in practice? answer: this is where magic works (with the help of science, hehe). quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more particles become so connected that the state of one instantly affects the state of the other, even if they are light years apart. the creature that finds itself "inside" the cage becomes so connected to the Enochian symbols that it can no longer separate itself from them. nope, this doesn't necessarily mean staying in the "same" place all the time. this means that no matter where the prisoner goes, he will remain in the cage dimension. he will remain connected, both literally and metaphorically. subsequently, this generates real torment and, possibly, even hallucinations due to psychological pressure.

what does it take to escape from the cage? answer: it's impossible to break the quantum entanglement. however, it's known that any interaction with the environment destroys quantum states, and entanglement disappears. do you remember how Amara, having broken free, damaged the cage by her mere presence on earth? I believe that this is a prime example of such an interaction. of course, focusing only on the canon of spn magic, it's hard to say why Lucifer couldn't get out right away, but these're more scenario errors lol.

CONCLUSION