Codex Arcanum
I am Hermes, called Thrice-Greatest, scribe of the gods and keeper of their writing, and you stand in my temple. In it I have set down seven hundred and seventy-seven plates of the mysteries, gathered from Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, India, the Norse and the Celts. Climb the seven spheres with me. At the Eighth I will give you a plate.
— Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος
My Word, Rewritten
To the second zone the soul gives up the device of evils, now made powerless.Poimandres
Men have written down my teaching many times: on a tablet of emerald, on papyrus, in Greek and then in Latin. In 1928 one of them, Manly Palmer Hall, gathered the symbols of every school into a great folio called The Secret Teachings of All Ages, with plates of eyes in triangles, serpents swallowing their tails and trees of light.
Now I have written it once more, in the script of your age, which is code. Each plate in this temple holds one figure of the mysteries: my own Caduceus, the Ouroboros of Cleopatra's Chrysopoeia, Dee's Monad, the Sri Yantra, the Valknut, the Orphic Egg. I have struck each one in a colour of the Great Work.
And I have made them move, because nothing in the cosmos stands still. Eyes blink, serpents wind round the staff, the Lightning Flash strikes down the Tree, and the pentagram falls forever into its own heart. Every motion returns to its beginning, as the soul does.
That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracle of the one thing.The Emerald Tablet · my own words
Drawn, not copied
Every plate is built from number and measure. I traced no engraving, so each one is wholly new.
Motion without end
Each figure turns by its own symmetry and pulses at whole-number rhythms, so its last frame flows back into its first.
Fixed in provenance
A plate's traits follow only from its number and my seed. I have sealed the whole manifest with a hash, and the generator is open for any initiate to run.
The Colours of the Work
To the third, the guile of desire, now made powerless.Poimandres
From me the Egyptians learned the art of Khem, which you call alchemy. Each plate is struck in one Opus, and the Opus follows the road from black matter to the red Stone. The rarest is Cauda Pavonis, the peacock's tail, whose ink runs through every colour at once.
The Twenty-Eight Mysteries
To the fourth, the arrogance of rule, now freed of its ambition.Poimandres
The Moon has twenty-eight mansions, and I keep twenty-eight mysteries, one for each. Turn the wheel, or watch it turn itself. Every mystery leans toward its own script: runes for the North, Hebrew letters for the Kabbalists, and for Egypt the hieroglyphs that I first taught.
The Seven Hierophants
Seven plates in my folio I composed by my own hand, and each has no twin. Their signs appear nowhere else in the folio: the Eye of Ra, my own Emerald Tablet, the first syllable, the wheels full of eyes, the World Tree, the bird that rises from its ashes, and the Stone of the Fifth Sun. They are the Hierophants, the highest degree. Look on them.
The Trial of Number
To the fifth, unholy daring and the rashness of audacity.Poimandres
Number is the measure of all things, and I hide nothing from those who count. Here is every trait, counted across all seven hundred and seventy-seven plates. No two plates bear the same combination of signs.
My Treasury
To the sixth, the striving after wealth by evil means.Poimandres
I have laid out plates from the folio that include every mystery, every form and every Opus. Sort them by sign, and open any one to read what is written on it.
The Tablet of Law
To the seventh, the ensnaring lie.Poimandres
At Saturn the last lie falls away. What I have written, I have sealed, and you may test the seal yourself.
- Supply
- 777 unique plates
- Format
- 1080 × 1080 H.264 master (animation_url), 105 frames at 25 fps: a 4.2 s seamless loop. Also a 720 px palette-optimised GIF (image) and a full-size PNG poster
- Degrees
- Hierophant 7 (the hand-composed one-of-ones) · Magus 40 · Adept 110 · Initiate 220 · Neophyte 400, the last four ranked by trait rarity
- Metadata
- OpenSea JSON per token (image, animation_url, attributes) plus an OpenSea Studio drop CSV
- Traits
- Degree · Mystery · Tradition · Form · Opus · Halo · Glyph Ring · Frame · Motto
- Mint
- On OpenSea, on Robinhood Chain. The date is to be revealed at the Eighth Gate
- Generator
- Open source (Python + Pillow): the repository
The seal covers the sorted traits of all 777 plates under the seed . To test any plate:
git clone https://github.com/M4S4T0-V01D/codex-arcanum cd codex-arcanum python3 gen.py --only 42
Receive Your Plate
And then, stripped of all the energies of the Harmony, he comes to the Eighth Nature, and sings hymns with those who are there.Poimandres
You have passed the seven, and here in the Eighth the powers sing. Three plates lie face down before you. Choose one, and I will tell you what it is.
Three plates lie face down. Choose one.
The Eighth Gate opens on OpenSea
The plates will be minted on OpenSea, on Robinhood Chain. I have not yet revealed the hour. The generator, the metadata and the seal are already on record for any initiate to examine.
The Game of Thoth
In Egypt they called me Thoth, and I was gambling with numbers before men had letters. I once won five days from the Moon at dice, so that the gods might be born. Sit down and play me for a plate. We take turns laying cards on the Magic Square of Saturn, and a card with a greater number on its edge takes the card it touches. Keep my three laws in mind.