2026 10 13 mystery school plan - SyberLabs/RISE GitHub Wiki

The RISE Mystery School (owner's plan, 2026-10-13)

Status: Intent, retained verbatim from the owner's Claude Doc of 2026-10-13 (source). The canon tables below are the source of truth for src/content/school/canon.js; its test holds the counts. The build design is the Mystery School design; the task is RDR-029.

A Neorenaissance canon of consciousness, technology, culture and spirit

2026-10-13 · mateo

Charter

The RISE Mystery School is a free, graded curriculum of public domain texts on consciousness, technology, culture and spirit, read through RISE. It treats reading as initiation: a reader moves through houses and degrees, and every text is chosen because it opened a door that is still open.

The name joins two lineages. The ancient mysteries at Eleusis taught by graded initiation, lesser rites before greater ones, not by lecture. The Renaissance began when recovered texts met a new medium: in 1463 Cosimo de' Medici had Marsilio Ficino set Plato aside to translate the Corpus Hermeticum first, and the printing press carried it across Europe within a decade.

We stand at a similar seam. Machine intelligence is a new medium of readership, and the public domain is a vast recovered library. Neorenaissance here means classical in its sources and avant garde in its medium: old texts, new ways of entering them.

Why public domain: every text can be copied, embedded, re-presented and annotated inside RISE without permission or fee, and handed to anyone. The commons is the school's ground.

Selection principles

A text enters the canon when it passes the first two tests and at least two of the rest.

  1. Free to carry. The original and the translation are both public domain in the US. Where only the original is free, the text is admitted as "original language only" until a free translation exists.
  2. Primary, not about. The source itself, never a summary of it. Commentary is something the school writes, not something it borrows.
  3. Source of a lineage. It started something that is still alive: a method, a vocabulary, a way of seeing.
  4. Bridge. It crosses houses. Leibniz belongs to philosophy and computation; Goethe to poetry and biology. Bridges are weighted heavily.
  5. Breadth of civilizations. Every house reaches beyond Europe where the free record allows.
  6. A threshold in every house. Difficulty is welcome, but each house has at least one text a newcomer can finish in an evening.
  7. Read against the grain. Texts with troubled legacies (Futurism, Frazer's colonial frame) may enter with a note, because the school studies how ideas go wrong as well as right.
  8. Clean edition. A proofed digital text beats raw OCR. Quality of the page is part of the reading.

The architecture

Everyone enters through the Gate; the seven houses can then be taken in any order, and inside each a reader climbs from Threshold to Arcanum. The houses follow the seven classical planets, a gesture Ficino would recognize: Saturn for contemplation, Mercury for craft and signal, Venus for beauty, Mars for the city and its conflicts.

The canon

The founding canon holds 66 texts: one Gate text and seven houses. Degree I is a threshold, II the core work, III the arcanum. Editions marked orig. only lack a free English translation; US only means public domain in the US but still in copyright in life+70 countries.

The Gate

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why it opens the school
Oration on the Dignity of Man Pico della Mirandola 1486 Latin, orig. only (verify a pre-1931 English) I The Renaissance manifesto: the human as the being with no fixed place, who must shape itself

Sun: House of the Logos (philosophy and first principles)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
Fragments Heraclitus c. 500 BCE John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 1892 I Flux, logos, the unity of opposites
Meditations Marcus Aurelius c. 170 George Long, 1862 I Philosophy as daily practice
Symposium, Phaedrus, Timaeus Plato c. 385 to 360 BCE Benjamin Jowett, 1871 II Eros as ascent, the soul's chariot, the cosmos as living creature
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche 1883 Thomas Common, 1909 II Self-overcoming; the classical avant garde
Monadology Leibniz 1714 Robert Latta, 1898 II Mind as perspective; a bridge to computation
Ethics Spinoza 1677 R. H. M. Elwes, 1883 III God or Nature, proven in geometric order
Enneads Plotinus c. 270 Stephen MacKenna, 1917 to 1930 III The One, emanation, return; the spine of Western mysticism
Nature Emerson 1836 Original I The American renaissance of the soul

Mercury: House of the Machine (computation, technology, signal)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
New Atlantis Francis Bacon 1627 Original I Salomon's House: the research institute as utopia
Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes Menabrea and Ada Lovelace 1843 Original English II First vision of general-purpose computation beyond number
Ninth Bridgewater Treatise Charles Babbage 1837 Original II Miracles as programmed exceptions; theology meets the engine
Laws of Thought George Boole 1854 Original III Logic becomes algebra
On Governors James Clerk Maxwell 1868 Original III The first paper of control theory
Darwin among the Machines; The Book of the Machines Samuel Butler 1863; 1872 Original I Machines as an evolving species
The Machine Stops E. M. Forster 1909 Original, US only I Total mediation, foreseen a century early
R.U.R. Karel Čapek 1920 Paul Selver, 1923, US only I The word "robot" is born
The Problem of Increasing Human Energy Nikola Tesla 1900 Original (Century Magazine) II Civilization as an energy system
Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik Ernst Kapp 1877 German, orig. only III Tools as projected organs

Moon: House of Mind (consciousness, dream, psyche)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
The Little Book of Life after Death Gustav Fechner 1836 Mary Wadsworth, 1904 I Panpsychism with a poet's touch
The Principles of Psychology, ch. 9, The Stream of Thought William James 1890 Original II Consciousness as a stream, not a chain
The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 Original I Mystical states studied with empirical respect
Cosmic Consciousness R. M. Bucke 1901 Original I A catalogue of illuminations across history
The Interpretation of Dreams Freud 1899 A. A. Brill, 1913 II The night mind gets a grammar
Psychological Types C. G. Jung 1921 H. Godwin Baynes, 1923, US only II Typology of consciousness
Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death F. W. H. Myers 1903 Original III The subliminal self
Matter and Memory Henri Bergson 1896 Paul and Palmer, 1911 III Memory as duration, not storage
Tertium Organum P. D. Ouspensky 1912 Bessaraboff and Bragdon, 1920 III Higher dimensions as states of mind

Venus: House of Imagination (poetry, art, beauty)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake 1790 Original I Energy is eternal delight
Hymns to the Night Novalis 1800 George MacDonald, 1897 I Romantic night as initiation
A Defence of Poetry Shelley 1821 Original I Poets as unacknowledged legislators
Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 Original I A self containing multitudes
On the Spiritual in Art Wassily Kandinsky 1911 Michael Sadler, 1914 I Abstraction as inner necessity
The Futurist Manifesto F. T. Marinetti 1909 Original (French) I Speed, machine, rupture; read against the grain
Divine Comedy Dante c. 1320 H. W. Longfellow, 1867 II The great initiatory journey of the West
Faust Goethe 1808, 1832 Bayard Taylor, 1870 II The striving mind and its bargains
Biographia Literaria Coleridge 1817 Original II Primary and secondary imagination
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man Schiller 1795 Bohn's Standard Library, 1845 III Play as the root of freedom and culture

Mars: House of the City (history, culture, power)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
The Prince Machiavelli 1532 W. K. Marriott, 1908 I Power seen without illusion
History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides c. 400 BCE Richard Crawley, 1874 II The first analytic history
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy Jacob Burckhardt 1860 S. G. C. Middlemore, 1878 II The book that invented "the Renaissance" as we picture it
The Golden Bough J. G. Frazer 1890; abr. 1922 Original II Myth and ritual compared; read against the grain
Muqaddimah Ibn Khaldun 1377 de Slane, French, 1862 to 1868 III Group feeling and the rise and fall of dynasties
The New Science Giambattista Vico 1725 Michelet, French abridgment, 1827 III History as the cycles of human making
The Decline of the West Oswald Spengler 1918 to 1922 C. F. Atkinson, 1926 to 1928, US only III Cultures as organisms with seasons

Jupiter: House of Cosmos (nature, form, order)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
On the Nature of Things Lucretius c. 55 BCE W. E. Leonard, 1916 I Atoms, swerve, freedom from fear
Flatland Edwin Abbott 1884 Original I A parable of dimensions
Art Forms in Nature Ernst Haeckel 1904 Plates, language-free I Nature's symmetry as pattern library
The Metamorphosis of Plants Goethe 1790 Emily Cox, in Goethe's Botany, 1863 II Morphology seen through participatory attention
Cosmos Alexander von Humboldt 1845 E. C. Otté, 1849 II The universe as one interconnected whole
On Growth and Form D'Arcy Thompson 1917 Original II Mathematics of living shape; root of generative form
Relativity: The Special and General Theory Albert Einstein 1916 Robert Lawson, 1920 II Space and time rewritten for a lay reader
Harmonices Mundi Johannes Kepler 1619 Latin, orig. only III The music of the spheres made quantitative

Saturn: House of the Mysteries (hermetic, mystical, contemplative)

Text Author Date Free edition Deg. Why
Tao Te Ching Laozi c. 400 BCE James Legge, 1891 I The way that cannot be named
Zhuangzi Zhuangzi c. 300 BCE Herbert Giles, 1889 I The butterfly dream; play as wisdom
Bhagavad Gita Vyasa (trad.) c. 200 BCE Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial, 1885 I Action without attachment
Emerald Tablet Hermes Trismegistus (attr.) c. 800 Isaac Newton's translation, c. 1680 I As above, so below
Upanishads Various c. 800 to 200 BCE Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East, 1879 to 1884 II Atman is Brahman
Corpus Hermeticum Hermetic authors c. 100 to 300 G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, 1906 II Mind as the maker of worlds; Ficino's first task
Masnavi Rumi 1258 to 1273 E. H. Whinfield, abr., 1887 II The reed's lament; love as cosmic force
The Cloud of Unknowing Anonymous c. 1375 Evelyn Underhill, ed., 1912 II Knowing by unknowing
The Interior Castle Teresa of Ávila 1577 Benedictines of Stanbrook, 1912 II The soul as seven mansions
Mystical Theology Pseudo-Dionysius c. 500 John Parker, 1897 III The apophatic way
Sermons Meister Eckhart c. 1300 C. de B. Evans, 1924 III The ground of the soul
Three Books of Occult Philosophy H. C. Agrippa 1533 J. F. (John French), 1651 III The Renaissance magical cosmos in full
The Heroic Frenzies Giordano Bruno 1585 L. Williams, 1887 III Infinite love for an infinite universe

Reading paths

Paths cut across houses so a reader can follow one question through many voices. Each takes four to eight weeks at a text a week.

1. The Ficino Path: how a renaissance happens

  1. Pico, Oration on the Dignity of Man
  2. Corpus Hermeticum (Poimandres)
  3. Plotinus, Enneads I.6, On Beauty
  4. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Part II
  5. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art

2. Ghosts in the Machine: mind meets mechanism

  1. Leibniz, Monadology (the mill passage, section 17)
  2. Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise
  3. Lovelace, Notes on the Analytical Engine
  4. Maxwell, On Governors
  5. Butler, The Book of the Machines
  6. Forster, The Machine Stops
  7. James, The Stream of Thought

3. Form and Becoming: the generative path

  1. Heraclitus, Fragments
  2. Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants
  3. Haeckel, Art Forms in Nature
  4. D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form
  5. Bergson, Matter and Memory
  6. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art

4. The Unsaid: the apophatic path

  1. Tao Te Ching
  2. Zhuangzi
  3. Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology
  4. The Cloud of Unknowing
  5. Eckhart, Sermons

5. The Seasons of Civilization

  1. Thucydides, the Melian Dialogue
  2. Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah (orig. only)
  3. Vico, The New Science (orig. only)
  4. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
  5. Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. I
  6. Frazer, The Golden Bough

How it lives in RISE

Each text becomes one catalog record plus a clean body, so RISE can present it many ways (stream, sequence, constellation) without re-sourcing.

The record

Field Example
id mercury.lovelace-notes
title, author, date Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes; Menabrea and Lovelace; 1843
house, degree Mercury; II
edition Original English, Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, vol. 3
translator, translator death year none
rights US: PD (pre-1931). Life+70: PD
source URL the proofed edition actually used
divisions Notes A to G, as RISE units
bridges Logos (Leibniz), Mind (James)
paths Ghosts in the Machine

Rights rules of thumb

  • US: works published in 1930 or earlier are public domain as of January 1, 2026. That covers most of this canon.
  • Life+70 countries (EU, UK): both author and translator must have died in 1955 or earlier. Texts that fail this are tagged US only.
  • A translation has its own copyright. A free original does not free a modern translation.
  • School-written commentary, introductions and new translations are original works; choose an open license for them (CC BY is the simplest).

Where to source, in order

  1. Standard Ebooks: carefully proofed and typeset, ideal for a reading medium.
  2. Project Gutenberg: the widest catalog; if a text is redistributed without its header, the Gutenberg name and license text must be removed.
  3. Wikisource: good for shorter works, essays and letters.
  4. Internet Archive: original scans, useful to check plates (Haeckel) and verify editions.
  5. Perseus: Greek and Latin originals; check each digital edition's license, since some carry share-alike terms.

Next steps

  • Verification pass on every edition: year, translator, translator death year, and a working source link
  • Find a free English Oration for the Gate, or make a new translation the school's first original work
  • Build the catalog as structured data, one record per text
  • Pilot the Ficino Path in RISE as the first public course
  • Choose a license for school-written commentary
  • Open a call for nominations: candidates go through the selection principles before admission

Published from docs/product/discussions/2026-10-13-mystery-school-plan.md. Edits made here are overwritten on the next push to main.