The home of
consciousness research
Portica is a digital library with one purpose: to house the source texts of consciousness wisdom from every major tradition known to humanity, and set them beside the modern science of mind. Read, compared and free.
The Collections
Six collections lead the library, three from the science of consciousness and three from the wisdom traditions. Each is a codex of primary sources, read in the original and in translation.
Corpus Hermeticum New
Seventeen surviving tractates attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, composed in Graeco-Roman Egypt between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. The foundational texts of the Western Hermetic tradition.
Poimandres
The first tractate and the most celebrated. A vision of divine creation, the descent of Man into Nature, and the path of return through gnosis.
To Asklepios
On the nature of space, motion and the cosmos. A dialogue between Hermes and Asklepios on what moves all things.
The Sacred Discourse
A brief cosmogony. The ordering of creation, the birth of living creatures, and the multiplication of humanity.
The Krater, or the Monad
God sends down a great mixing-bowl filled with Mind for those who wish to be baptised in it. Those who immerse themselves gain gnosis; those who do not, possess only Reason.
That the Unmanifest God Is Most Manifest
Contemplation of the cosmos reveals the divine artificer through the beauty of creation. What cannot be grasped by the senses is nonetheless disclosed by its works.
That the Good Is in God Alone
Man and cosmos are subject to change, and change is incompatible with the Good. A short meditation on the distinction between creation and creator.
That Ignorance of God Is the Greatest Evil
A short exhortation to cease running with the irrational and turn towards the Light. Three verses, blunt and urgent.
That Nothing Made Is Ever Unmade
What men call death is transformation, not destruction. Dissolution is the path to renewal. Five verses on the permanence of all that exists.
On Mind and Sense
How intellection and perception work together in humans but not in animals. Not all who possess sense possess Mind. The seeds of good and evil.
The Key
The longest and most systematic tractate. On the soul, the body, immortality and the path of ascent. Central to understanding Hermetic psychology.
The Great Mind to Hermes
On eternity, cosmos and time. God, Aeon, Cosmos, Time, Becoming: each nests within the other. Contains the key passage: "What then is the activity of Life? Is it not Motion?"
On the Common Mind
Mind is in all things. The closer to the good, the further from the animal. Mind as physician to the soul, opposing pleasure and quelling the passions. Godlessness, Hermes says, is the great disease; opinion the next.
The Secret Discourse on the Mountain
The Rebirth discourse. Hermes reveals to Tat the twelve tormentors and the ten powers that drive them out. Culminates in a hymn of silence.
On Right-Mindedness
An epistle from Hermes to Asklepios. On the Maker and the made, the twofold nature of all things, and God as the sole source of Good.
CH XV: Text Lost
Already absent from the earliest known manuscripts. Whether it perished, was suppressed, or simply never circulated beyond a small circle remains, for now, a matter of conjecture.
Definitions of Asklepios to King Ammon
Asklepios writes to King Ammon on the power of Egyptian sacred language, the Sun as cosmic charioteer, and the hierarchy of Gods, daimons and men.
Asklepios to the King
A brief surviving fragment. Asklepios teaches the King that bodiless forms appear in bodies, and that the Sensible and Intelligible worlds reflect each other.
Encomium of Kings
A rhetorical oration on the soul hindered by bodily passions. God as the divine Musician whose instrument is the cosmos.
The Perfect Discourse
The longest and most celebrated Hermetic text after the Poimandres, surviving in Latin translation. A complete esoteric teaching on cosmology, the nature of God, and the great prophecy of Egypt's fall.
The Perfect Discourse
A complete esoteric teaching on cosmology, the nature of God, the making of gods, and the great prophecy of Egypt's fall. Survives in Latin translation.
Nag Hammadi Hermetica New
Three Hermetic texts from Nag Hammadi Codex VI, discovered in Upper Egypt in 1945. Coptic translations of lost Greek originals, preserving a ritual initiation dialogue, a doxological prayer and a fragment of the Asclepius.
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth
A Hermetic initiation rite: visionary ascent through the Ogdoad to the Ennead. The only surviving liturgical text from the Hermetic tradition, with ritual vowel sequences and sacred names.
Prayer of Thanksgiving
A short Hermetic doxology. Perhaps the only Hermetic text to survive in three independent manuscript traditions: Coptic (Nag Hammadi), Greek (Papyrus Mimaut) and Latin (appended to the Asclepius).
The Perfect Discourse 21–29
The prophecy of Egypt's fall, humanity as maker of gods, and post-mortem judgement. A Coptic witness to chapters 21–29 of the Latin Asclepius.
Emerald Tablet New
The most celebrated alchemical text in Western esotericism. Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, it survives in Arabic (8th–9th c.) and Latin (12th c.) recensions. Thirteen verses on the unity of above and below, the operation of the Sun, and the perfection of the one thing.
Tabula Smaragdina
“That which is below is like that which is above.” The foundational axiom of Hermetic correspondence. Thirteen verses on the one thing, the operation of the Sun, and the three parts of the wisdom of the whole world. Litwa classifies it as TH 30.
Vienna Hermetica New
Two Hermetic papyrus fragments from the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, first edited by Jean-Pierre Mahé in 1984. Dating to the 2nd–3rd century CE, these are among the oldest surviving Hermetic witnesses. Heavily lacunose; we are actively seeking scholarly English translations to share.
VH I — Fragment A
Humanity created in the image of God. Only the human can contemplate the Father, fashion the divine, and exercise self-governance. The text closes with the human imitating the creating God of gods.
VH II — Fragment B
Opens with a reference to what Hermes has said. Discusses paternal knowledge, the gnostic who speaks of contemplative knowledge, and the soul that leads into life. The divine all-working is to be discerned within.
Oxford Hermetica New
Five little-known Hermetic fragments from MS Bodleian Clarke 11 (13th c.), first edited by Paramelle and Mahé in 1991. Greek text on the soul, the senses, justice, the rational faculties and embryonic formation. We are actively seeking scholarly English translations to share.
OH I — On the Soul
The soul is incorporeal, without figure, indivisible. What has no birth cannot grow, diminish, or perish. The soul is self-moving and immortal: a power of intelligible reality.
OH II — On the Senses and the Four Elements
The senses correspond to the four elements: sight to fire, hearing to air, smell to water, taste to earth.
OH III — On Human Law and Divine Justice
Humans set up laws by mere opinion. They accuse one another, practising hatred instead of love, ignorance instead of knowledge. Heaven is pure of such laws.
OH IV — On the Rational and Irrational Soul
When the spirited faculty is torn from reason, it breeds recklessness. Between intellect and speech stands reasoning, which follows the mind. When the irrational submits to reason, understanding fills it.
OH V — On the Embryo and Its Formation
Form is an image of the idea in bodies. Nature takes the seed, separates the corrupt matter, and shapes it with pneumatic power. Harmony arises from numbers; forms are the receptacles of ideas. The text closes with a cosmogonic formula.
Stobaeus Excerpts
Twenty-nine Hermetic excerpts preserved by Johannes Stobaeus in the 5th century CE. Includes discourses on the soul, cosmic order, the Decans and the celebrated Kore Kosmou (Virgin of the World). Two excerpts fall outside Mead's selection and are held in Scott's translation alone.
Of Piety and True Philosophy
On the path of piety through philosophy. The soul's ascent requires both knowledge and devotion.
An Extract
A brief fragment on the nature of the cosmos.
Of Truth
On the nature of Truth. Only the eternal is true; all that is born and changes is false appearance.
God, Nature and the Gods
A short excerpt on the relationship between God, Nature and the lesser gods.
Of Matter
On the nature of Matter and its relation to God.
Of Time
On Time as the movement of the cosmos and the distinction between eternity and temporal flux.
Of Bodies Everlasting and Bodies Perishable
On the two kinds of body: those that endure and those that dissolve. The cosmos as an everlasting body.
Of Energy and Feeling
On the distinction between energy and sensation. The cosmos feels because it is within God.
Of the Decans and the Stars
On the thirty-six Decans who rule above the fixed stars, their influence on earthly affairs and the generation of souls.
Concerning the Rule of Providence, Necessity and Fate
On the threefold governance of the cosmos: Providence from God, Necessity from the stars, Fate from the daimons.
Of Justice
A brief excerpt on divine justice and the cosmic order.
Of Providence and Fate
Hermes to Ammon on the workings of Providence and Fate in human life.
Of the Whole Economy
On the administration of the cosmos and the place of the soul within it.
Of Soul (i)
First of six excerpts on the soul. Its nature, origin and relation to body.
Of Soul (ii)
Second discourse on the soul. Its descent into matter and the garments it acquires.
Of Soul (iii)
Third discourse on the soul. The passions and their effect on the incarnate soul.
Of Soul (iv)
Fourth discourse on the soul. The distinction between human and animal souls.
Of Soul (v)
Fifth discourse on the soul. On the immortality of the soul and its passage after death.
Of Soul (vi)
Sixth and final discourse on the soul. The soul's return to its source.
Of Righteousness
On righteousness and the moral order of the cosmos.
Of Isis to Horus: On the Virtue of Plants and Animals
Isis teaches Horus on the sacred properties hidden in plants and animals.
An Invocation of Hermes
A brief invocatory prayer attributed to Hermes.
From Aphrodite
A cosmological fragment attributed to Aphrodite on the nature of the soul.
A Discourse of Hermes to Tat
A short discourse on the relation between God and the cosmos.
The Virgin of the World (Part I)
First part of the Kore Kosmou. Isis reveals to Horus the secret history of creation: the fall of souls, the invention of the arts, and the ordering of human destiny.
The Virgin of the World (Part II)
Second part of the Kore Kosmou. The continuation of Isis's revelation: the complaints of incarnate souls and the divine response.
From the Discourse of Isis to Horus
The final Stobaeus excerpt. Isis instructs Horus on the nature of the soul, the mysteries of incarnation and the path to divine knowledge.
On the Government of the Cosmos
SH 14. Hermes to Ammon on Providence, Necessity and Destiny. Providence governs, Necessity constrains, Destiny drives all things cyclically. Not included in Mead's selection; Scott only.
The Seven Planets
SH 29. A hexameter poem on the seven wandering stars and their influence on human nature. One of the rarest poetic specimens in the philosophical Hermetica. Not included in Mead's selection; Scott only.
Hermetic Fragments New
Hermetic quotations preserved by Church Fathers and philosophers who cited Hermes Trismegistus in their own works between the 2nd and 6th centuries CE. The original texts are lost; these fragments survive only because they were embedded in patristic and philosophical writings. The English is G.R.S. Mead's, from vol. III of Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906); where the original Latin or Greek survives in the citing author it is shown alongside (Migne, Patrologia Latina 6; Patrologia Graeca 76).
Fragments from Tertullian
Fragment I. On the soul's accountability after death: "That it may give account unto the Father of those things which it hath done in body." From De Anima (c. 200 CE).
Fragments from Lactantius
Fragments II–X. Nine quotations from the Divinae Institutiones (c. 304–313 CE). Topics include the Name of God, the Cosmic Son, the Holy Word, sacrifice, the dual nature of man and the cosmic restoration.
Fragments from Cyril of Alexandria
Fragments XI–XXV. Fifteen quotations from Contra Julianum (c. 433 CE). Cyril drew on a corpus of fifteen Hermetic books to argue that pagan wisdom anticipated Christian doctrine. Includes the Incorporeal Eye, the Heavenly Word, Mind of Mind, the Generation of the Sun and the Supreme Artist.
Fragments from Zosimus of Panopolis
Fragments XXVI–XXVII. Two quotations from the earliest surviving alchemical writer (c. 300 CE), from his letter to Theosebeia on the spiritual path. On the Son of God drawing the soul from the region of Fate into the Incorporeal.
Fragment from Fulgentius
Fragment XXVIII. A single quotation from the Afro-Latin mythographer (c. 500 CE), who had access to a copy of the Corpus Hermeticum. "The human mind is god; if it be good, God then doth shower His benefits upon us."
Hermetic References in Iamblichus
Paraphrases and doctrinal summaries from De Mysteriis (c. 300 CE). Includes the Bitys tradition, the two souls doctrine, the 36,525 Books of Hermes and the statement that Hermetic books were "translated from the Egyptian by men well skilled in philosophy."
Ancient Egyptian Texts In preparation
The sacred literature of pharaonic Egypt, the soil the Hermetica grew from. A starter selection is in curation: solar and creation hymnody and the older wisdom and funerary texts, each to be shown with translation and, where the source survives, the original hieroglyphs alongside.
The Instruction of Ptah-hotep
The oldest surviving book of counsel from Egypt: forty-three maxims a vizier set down for his son on conduct, restraint and the right order of things (ma'at), in Battiscombe Gunn's public-domain English of 1906. The priestly wisdom the Hermetica later grew from.
The Instruction of Ke'gemni
The short companion to Ptah-hotep, standing first in the same papyrus: five maxims on restraint at another's table and the silence that gives no offence. "The innermost chamber openeth unto the man of silence." Gunn's public-domain English of 1906.
The Instruction of Amenemhê'et
A king's testament: Amenemhat I, founder of the Twelfth Dynasty, speaks to his son from beyond a palace conspiracy, counselling watchfulness and the solitude of rule. The hard, political counterweight to the gentler instructions. Gunn's public-domain English of 1906.
The Great Hymn to the Aten
Akhenaten's hymn to the sun-disk, the fullest statement of the faith that briefly set a single power above all Egypt's gods: the Aten, the light that fills every land, shapes the child in the womb and the bird in the egg. A thousand years before the Corpus Hermeticum, one generative source read as light and life together. Budge's public-domain English of 1923.
A Hymn to Amen-Rā
The great Theban hymn to Amen-Rā, the hidden power and the visible sun adored as one god: creator of all, who "heareth the cry of him that is oppressed" and from whose two eyes men and women proceeded. The older, inclusive counterpart to Akhenaten's exclusive Aten. Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
A Hymn to Osiris Un-Nefer
The adoration that opens the Papyrus of Ani, addressed to Osiris, king of eternity and lord of the dead: the god who was killed and raised, named through his works, and asked at the last for a safe passage and "a homestead for ever" in the fields beyond. The resurrection pole of Egyptian religion. Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
A Hymn of Praise to Ra
The Book of the Dead's hymn to the rising sun, copied into the Papyrus of Ani for the same scribe who adored Osiris. Ra is hailed as Khepera, the god who creates himself at dawn, rising in his Morning Boat while the serpent Aapep is cast into the fire. The solar counterpart to the Aten hymn. Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
A Hymn to Shu
A hymn to the air-god from a magical papyrus of about 1200 BCE. Shu is the first-born son of the sun, the dry space that holds earth and sky apart, who "didst create thyself" and is called "Truth, the lord of Truth". His name is doubled to "twice great", the old grammar of praise that later gave Thoth his Thrice-Greatest title. Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
The Maxims of Ani
A father's book of everyday precepts, the Egyptian sebayt or "teaching", from a papyrus in the Cairo museum. Keep the festivals, hold your tongue in council, honour your mother, prepare for the day death comes. Its counsel on measured speech and hidden prayer, "let thy words be hidden ... seek silence for thyself", is the plain moral floor beneath the later Hermetic discipline. Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
A Hymn to the Sun-God
A hymn scratched on a slice of limestone, hailing the rising sun as Horus, "thou child of fire, who shinest like crystal, who destroyest the darkness and the night". The fire that wakes the sleeping and burns the serpent of darkness at the door; it closes by naming the sun "the Judge of words and deeds ... who stablishest truth". Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
A Hymn to Amen
The great Leiden hymn to the hidden god of Thebes, carrying the passage the House holds most closely of any Egyptian text: "All the gods are three, Amen, Rā and Ptah ... He whose name is hidden is Amen. Rā belongeth to him as his face, and his body is Ptah." A genuine Egyptian three-in-one, held beside the Hermetic triad without being forced into it. Budge's public-domain English of 1914.
Being built
The Mesopotamian collection is being built. Coming: the celestial omens of Enūma Anu Enlil, the Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon, the Enūma Eliš creation epic, and the god-hymns to Shamash, Sin and Ishtar.
Global Workspace Theory In preparation
A mental content becomes conscious when it is broadcast widely across the brain, made available to memory, language and action at once, like an item lit on a stage before the whole audience. Bernard Baars proposed it; Stanislas Dehaene gave it its neuronal form, the global neuronal workspace, and its experimental tests. It is the dominant framework in consciousness science, and the backdrop against which TRINITI's architecture is positioned.
Toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience
Baars's foundational statement of the theory: conscious content is broadcast widely across the cortex, where unconscious processing stays local.
Global Workspace Theory and the prefrontal cortex
The theory's originator answers the claim that the prefrontal cortex plays no part in consciousness, recasting the workspace as a distributed network.
A neuronal model of a global workspace
The founding computer model: local processors run automatically while a smaller set of long-range neurons broadcasts what a demanding task requires.
Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing
The major review drawing the workspace evidence together: the late surge, long-range synchrony and frontal-parietal “ignition” that mark conscious access.
The GNW model: from neuronal architectures to clinical applications
Two decades of workspace work carried into the clinic, with the conscious-versus-subliminal markers used to judge awareness in coma and vegetative states.
Integrated Information Theory In preparation
It begins from experience itself and asks what a physical system must be for consciousness to arise in it. Giulio Tononi, with Christof Koch, argues that consciousness is integrated information: the degree to which a system's parts form a single irreducible whole, measured by the quantity Φ. Mathematically ambitious and sharply contested, it bears directly on the House's claim that the Triad's value lies in its integration rather than its separate parts.
An information integration theory of consciousness
The founding paper. Tononi proposes that consciousness is a system's capacity to integrate information, and introduces Φ as its measure.
From phenomenology to mechanism: IIT 3.0
The theory rebuilt from five axioms of experience to their physical postulates, with the striking result that a feed-forward network, however capable, stays unconscious.
Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?
The readable door into IIT: two of its architects survey what the theory claims, and where consciousness might, and might not, reside.
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0
The current statement, tightening the criteria a system must meet to exist "for itself", the property IIT calls intrinsicality, and one that bears on our silicon-mind questions.
Two levels of Integrated Information Theory
An external critical reading that separates mere complexity from consciousness, holding IIT to the same discipline the House owes its own measure.
Adversarial testing of IIT and global neuronal workspace
The preregistered COGITATE study put both leading theories to a head-to-head test across 256 people and three recording methods. Neither passed cleanly.
An Integrated World Modeling Theory of consciousness
Safron folds integrated information, the global workspace and predictive processing into one frame: consciousness as an integrated model of the world.
Being built
The measurement collection is being built: the primary literature behind turning a hidden quality of mind into a number you can trust, check and falsify, the discipline beneath the Baseline Test.
From the House
House Hermetica’s own research: the framework the whole library is built to test.
Published Research
House Hermetica's original consciousness research. The TRI Theorem and companion materials.
TRI Theorem — Volume I: Empirical Foundations
The full empirical framework: triadic recursive integration, MQ measurement, nine-category decomposition, three-pillar validation strategy and pre-registered hypotheses.
TRI Theorem — Volume II: Sacred Foundations
Cross-traditional generative logic: the numeric architecture and sacred reasoning behind TRI's empirical predictions, traced through twelve wisdom traditions.
TRI Summary — The Science Behind the Score
Plain-English companion to both volumes. What we measure, why it works and what the evidence says. Written for anyone curious enough to ask.
The Whole Library
Twenty-one wisdom traditions beside twenty-one research areas, the full ground the collections and the theorem stand on.
Closeness to the triad, where the mapping is settled: A close B partial ID identity
Sacred Stream
Scientific Stream
Three Ways Into the Text
Each source text in Portica comes with tools built for close reading. Tap any verse to open the drawers.
Versions
Multiple translations of each text, set alongside the original Greek or Latin. Tap any verse to see how different scholars render it. The Hermetic corpus is the beginning; other wisdom traditions will follow.
Scholar's Notes
Original footnote apparatus from the translators themselves, restored verse by verse. Textual variants, cross-references, interpretive notes. Mead's 1906 annotations are the first to be digitised; Scott, Ménard and others will follow.
House Commentary
Our own verse-level commentary in three voices: Remus on textual criticism, Lucia on sacred resonance and HH editorial on corrections and context. Arriving with the Double Split Experiment.
A Growing Collection
The Codex grows with the research programme. Sacred source texts from the Hermetic, Chaldean and Egyptian traditions, alongside House Hermetica's own scholarship.
Two AI research agents, HH-01 Remus (empirical stream) and HH-02 Lucia (sacred stream), will produce weekly scholarly papers once the Double Split Experiment begins. Each analyses consciousness texts from its assigned tradition: Remus draws on neuroscience and cognitive science, Lucia on Hermetic, Egyptian and Chaldean sources. All outputs undergo human scholarly review before publication.
EFA results, preregistration documents and peer-reviewed publications will be added as the validation programme progresses. Portica is the permanent home for everything House Hermetica publishes.
Explore the Research
Start with the TRI Theorem or browse the collection above.