Site Map

The front page: the three doors, the seven principles and the planet of the day.

A plain orientation for the newcomer: what this tradition is, what it asks of you, and how to spend your first week.

Nearly two thousand years in nine stages: how a handful of Greek dialogues from Egypt became the backbone of Western esotericism.

Seven axioms that summarize the Hermetic view of the world, where they really come from, and how to put each one to use.

Fourteen lines that the alchemists took for their charter. The text in full, its real history and a commentary for the student.

What survives of the writings of Hermes, what each text contains, and where a new reader should begin.

The great world and the small. How the Hermetic writers pictured the universe, and why the picture is a map of the soul.

The art of transmutation, in the furnace and in the soul: three principles, four colors, seven operations and one stone.

Ten spheres and twenty two paths: the diagram on which the Western tradition arranges everything it knows.

The definitions, the kinds, the competing explanations, and an honest account of what the art can and cannot be expected to do.

Every ceremony, however elaborate, has the same skeleton. Learn the seven parts and you can read any ritual and build your own.

Fire, water, air and earth are not substances but modes: four ways in which anything, including a person, can be.

Seven powers, seven days, and a method of timing that has been in continuous use for two thousand years.

An intention condensed into a sign, and a sign fixed in an object. The two most practical techniques in the art.

Three arts of reading pattern, and a way of using them that keeps both feet on the ground.

The least glamorous tool in the art and the only one that cannot be done without.

The cautions that experienced practitioners wish they had been given at the start. Read this page before you practice.

The magnum opus of the alchemists, understood as the lifelong labor of becoming what one is capable of being.

Six graded exercises, from simply sitting still to the sustained contemplation of a symbol.

The will of the tradition is not clenched effort. It is the capacity to choose a direction and keep to it, and it can be trained like a muscle.

The alchemists began in blackness. What the black stage means for the inner work, and how to pass through it with care.

The work is done in days. How to arrange one, and how to keep going when the novelty has worn off.

One year, twelve themes, twenty minutes a day. A structured way through everything on this site.

The working vocabulary of the tradition, defined briefly and without mystification.

The symbolic language of the tradition laid out in tables: what belongs with what.

The principal signs of the tradition, drawn and explained. Each is a sentence in a language of shapes.

What to read, in what order, and what to look for. Sources first, commentary afterwards.

Divide any day and night into the twenty four planetary hours and find the ruler of each.

See how a word becomes a sign. Type a statement and watch it traced on a planetary square or a wheel of letters.

On making a place to practice out of a corner, a table and a habit.

The most quoted line in Western esotericism is also the most loosely used.

The alchemists' two word summary of their art, read as the pattern of any real change in a life.

Four verbs that still make the best short description of a balanced practitioner.

Grimoires and Hermetic treatises were not written for us, and they punish hasty readers.

How would you know whether a working had worked? On coincidence, wishful thinking and writing things down first.

The small group who write, review and maintain these pages.

How these pages are researched, written, reviewed and corrected.

The questions that newcomers ask most often, answered as directly as the subject allows.

Search every article, table and essay on the site.

A short page, because there is little to report. The site is built to know as little about its visitors as possible.

The conditions on which these pages are offered. In short: this is general information for study, and you are responsible for what you do with it.

A chart of the whole site: eight sections, every page, and a line on what each one holds.