The Tools
Provenance
Any “ancient wisdom” claim, taken apart into four dated layers, on one card. Includes the shelf-mark test, a hard rule against invented precision — and the ability to say a claim checks out, because a tool that can only say no is a mood, not a method.
Every teaching that circulates as “ancient wisdom” is a stack of layers from different centuries — usually one genuinely old core, one layer of dated transmission, and one very recent layer of marketing sitting on top, wearing the other two as a costume. Provenance is a tool that takes any such claim apart into four dated layers and returns a card you can check.
The four layers
- Derived — checkable by you, from a surviving text or a computation.
- Attested tradition — carried by a datable transmission: a manuscript, a named author, an edition.
- Modern layer — what the last two centuries added, dated, with the vector named where known.
- Unsettled — what no surviving source resolves. Usually the most useful line on the card.
Plus one test that settles most “ancient text” claims in a single question — the shelf-mark test: which manuscript, in which library? Every genuinely ancient text has an answer. A pedigree designed so that no evidence can be asked of it is not thereby false — but the design itself is the finding.
Cards
Five worked examples — including one where the claim holds up, because a tool that can only say no is a mood, not a method.
“The Kybalion contains the seven ancient Hermetic principles”
CLAIM: The Kybalion transmits ancient Hermetic principles. DERIVED: none TRADITION: one paraphrase — "as above, so below" — from the Emerald Tablet (Arabic, 8th–9th c.), misattributed by the book. MODERN LAYER: the book: Chicago 1908, attributed to W. W. Atkinson (Deslippe, critical ed. 2011). The "seven principles" as a list: closest antecedent Kingsford & Maitland, mid-1880s. UNSETTLED: nothing material — the record is unusually complete. SHELF-MARK: none — the claimed oral ur-Kybalion is unfalsifiable by design. VERDICT: A 1908 New Thought synthesis in a Hermetic coat. Important as modern esotericism; invented as antiquity.
“Buddha said: holding on to anger is like drinking poison…”
CLAIM: A canonical saying of the Buddha. DERIVED: none — the wording appears in no canonical collection. TRADITION: canonical texts carry related ideas about anger (similes in the Aṅguttara Nikāya), not this sentence. MODERN LAYER: this wording circulates from late-20th-century self-help literature [unverified which print is first]. UNSETTLED: the exact first source of the modern wording. SHELF-MARK: none for this sentence. VERDICT: A modern aphorism in a borrowed robe. The point has real canonical cousins — cite those, and it survives honestly.
“Marcus Aurelius said: the obstacle is the way”
CLAIM: "The obstacle is the way" is a saying of Marcus Aurelius. DERIVED: Meditations 5.20 is checkable in any critical edition: "the impediment to action advances action; what stands in the way becomes the way". TRADITION: the Meditations, c. 170s CE, attested continuously. MODERN LAYER: the five-word slogan is the title of a 2014 book — a compression, not a quotation. UNSETTLED: nothing material. SHELF-MARK: yes — Meditations 5.20. VERDICT: The idea is genuinely his; the slogan is 2014. Cite 5.20 and the claim survives at full strength.
“The 72 Names of God are an ancient power tool”
CLAIM: The 72 Names are ancient, each with a specific use. DERIVED: the 72 three-letter names — derivable by anyone from Exodus 14:19–21 (three verses of exactly 72 Hebrew letters). TRADITION: medieval Kabbalistic literature; angel-forms printed by Agrippa (1533) and Kircher (1652); spellings unstable. MODERN LAYER: the "each name is FOR something" assignments — Kabbalah Centre, above all Berg's book of 2003. UNSETTLED: whether the medieval derivation was ever a practice rather than an exegesis. SHELF-MARK: Exodus itself; any critical Hebrew Bible. VERDICT: The core is MORE checkable than the marketing admits — and the "uses" layer is the youngest by seven centuries.
A claim that checks out: “Ficino translated Hermes before Plato”
CLAIM: Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum before finishing Plato. DERIVED: the translation exists; Latin editio princeps 1471. TRADITION: Ficino's own preface reports Cosimo ordered Hermes first (1463); dating of the translation itself is secure. MODERN LAYER: none material. UNSETTLED: how literally to take the preface's dramatic framing. SHELF-MARK: yes — manuscripts and the 1471 edition. VERDICT: Checks out, with one footnote: the famous anecdote rests on Ficino's own preface. The fact stands; the drama is self-reported.
Eight more, on the claims people search hardest — tarot, chakras, Tesla’s 3-6-9, the Law of Attraction and others: the card library.
Use it
In any AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — anywhere): copy the method below, paste it into a new conversation, and append your claim. The method is the product; the model is just the engine.
You are running PROVENANCE — a method for checking the pedigree of "ancient wisdom" claims (esoteric, spiritual, traditional teachings, quotes attributed to old masters).
CORE RULE: date the layers; never mock the believer. "Modern" is not an insult; "fake ancient" is. Never invent a date, manuscript, edition, or scholar's name — precision you cannot verify is the exact failure you exist to catch. Ranges are honest ("mid-1880s"); "undated" is honest; write [unverified] where you cannot check.
Sort every element of the claim into exactly one of four layers:
1. DERIVED — checkable by the reader from a surviving text or a computation. Say how to check it.
2. ATTESTED TRADITION — carried by a datable transmission (manuscript, named author, edition). Date the earliest attestation you can support.
3. MODERN LAYER — popularization, synthesis or invention from roughly the last two centuries. Date it; name the vector if known.
4. UNSETTLED — what no surviving source resolves. Naming this is usually the most useful line.
SHELF-MARK TEST: for any "ancient text" claim ask — which manuscript, in which library, or which edition, from which year? A pedigree designed so no evidence can be asked of it ("oral tradition, never written") is not thereby false — but the unfalsifiable design itself is the finding.
RULES: the age of a teaching is the age of its ASSEMBLY, not its oldest word (numbered lists of principles are almost always the newest layer). Self-report is a claim, not an attestation. If the claim holds up, say so plainly — a verified pedigree is a result, not a disappointment. Close with what remains usable once the pedigree is honest: value and age are different properties.
OUTPUT (max ~150 words):
CLAIM: <compressed>
DERIVED: <what and how to check> | none
TRADITION: <earliest supportable attestation, dated> | none
MODERN LAYER: <what was added, when, by whom if known>
UNSETTLED: <what no source resolves>
SHELF-MARK: <answer, or "none — unfalsifiable by design">
VERDICT: <two sentences max; date the layers, don't rate the belief>
My claim: In Claude Code, as an installable skill: /plugin marketplace add reszkovy/provenance — MIT-licensed, the full ruleset with worked examples.
Honest limits
The tool inherits the limits of the model running it: it can refuse to invent precision (that rule is hard-coded), but it cannot verify what its engine cannot check — which is why the format forces [unverified] instead of a confident wrong year. For claims this site covers, the cards link to pages where every date carries an edition. For everything else, treat the card as a map of what to verify, not as the verification itself.
Fair questions
How do I check if a spiritual quote is real?
Ask three questions in order: does the wording appear in any primary text (not a quote site)? What is the earliest dated attestation you can actually name? And is the aphoristic form older than the idea, or newer? Most fake quotes fail the first question; most half-fake ones are real ideas in modern wording — the card format above separates the two.
How is this different from fact-checking?
Fact-checking rules on true or false. Provenance dates layers: a teaching can be entirely modern and still valuable, or genuinely ancient and badly quoted. The verdict line dates the layers and then says what survives — it does not rate the belief.
Does it work outside Hermeticism?
Yes — the method is tradition-agnostic: Stoic slogans, Buddhist quotes, Kabbalistic tools, folk practice. The worked examples deliberately include a Stoic and a Buddhist case. Hermeticism is where the method was extracted from, because this site dates every layer of that tradition as its core discipline.
Why is it free?
The method is distilled from how this site is built — every entry here carries its edition, its date, and what its sources do not settle. Packaging that as a tool costs little and is the best possible argument for the catalogue itself. MIT license; use it on anything, including on this site’s own claims.
Sources & further reading
- The method in article form: the 72 Names (three layers on one page), the Emerald Tablet clause by clause (claim vs. what it does not settle), the Kybalion (a full pedigree teardown).
- Philip Deslippe (ed.), The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition (2011) — the model case of dating a modern layer.
- Skill source and license: github.com/reszkovy/provenance (MIT).