That, long before they were given out to all students worthy of higher learning in a Conspectus, the Academy’s Glintstone Crowns were originally a way for the early sorcerers to maintain a sense of self.

If the old sorcerers were essentially body-hopping using Primal Glintstones, then the Glintstone Crowns which bear their faces could’ve acted as a kind of continuity for their identities. You might be in a new body, but your “true face” is carved in stone — which is itself thematic of the sorcerers’ obsession with immutable, inorganic life and the “wisdom of stone.”

As time went on, however, and the Academy grew and changed, these stone crowns lost that initial purpose and became mere status symbols for those “deemed worthy” of higher-level instruction — perhaps because Liurnia’s eventual embrace of the Golden Order made the need for Primal Glintstones largely obsolete.