The Tools

Provenance cards

TL;DR

Eight claims people actually search for — tarot, chakras, Tesla’s 3-6-9, the Law of Attraction, Enochian, the 42 books of Hermes, ‘as within so without’, the Key of Solomon — each sorted into dated layers on one card. Several of them survive with their oldest layer intact; that is the point of the method.

The Provenance method, applied to eight claims that circulate hardest. The format never changes: what a reader can check, the earliest supportable attestation, what the last two centuries added, and a verdict that dates the layers without rating the belief. Where a date cannot be supported, the card says [unverified] instead of guessing.

“Tarot comes from ancient Egypt”

CLAIM: Tarot is an ancient Egyptian initiatory system.
DERIVED: none — no Egyptian source depicts or names tarot.
TRADITION: playing-card tarot is attested in 15th-century Italy
  (trionfi decks, Milan/Ferrara) as a game.
MODERN LAYER: the "Egyptian secret doctrine" reading begins with
  Court de Gébelin, *Le Monde primitif* (Paris, 1781) — asserted
  without evidence, decades before hieroglyphs could be read.
UNSETTLED: why the occult reading proved so durable.
SHELF-MARK: 15th-c. Italian decks survive (e.g. Visconti-Sforza).
VERDICT: A Renaissance card game with an 18th-century Egyptian
  costume. The full story: thehermeticum.com/ideas/tarot/

“The seven chakras are an ancient universal system”

CLAIM: Humanity always knew the body has exactly seven chakras.
DERIVED: none — counts vary across the source traditions.
TRADITION: chakra schemes appear in medieval tantric texts, with
  systems of five, six, nine or more centres; the six-plus-one
  scheme is one lineage among several.
MODERN LAYER: the fixed Western "seven chakras" package — colours,
  glands, one-to-one psychology — descends from Woodroffe's *The
  Serpent Power* (1919) and Leadbeater's *The Chakras* (1927).
UNSETTLED: how much of the modern system any single tantric
  lineage would recognise.
SHELF-MARK: yes — the tantric manuscripts exist and disagree.
VERDICT: Ancient family of practices, modern standardisation.
  The number seven is the newest layer, not the oldest.

“Tesla said: the 3, 6 and 9 are the key to the universe”

CLAIM: Nikola Tesla taught a 3-6-9 secret of the universe.
DERIVED: none.
TRADITION: none — the sentence appears in no Tesla writing,
  lecture, patent or interview known to scholarship.
MODERN LAYER: the quote circulates unattributed online and
  surges in the 2010s numerology revival [unverified where it
  first appears in print].
UNSETTLED: nothing — absence of a source is the finding.
SHELF-MARK: none.
VERDICT: An internet aphorism wearing a laboratory coat. Tesla's
  real eccentricities are documented; this sentence is not among
  them.

“The Law of Attraction is an ancient Hermetic law”

CLAIM: "Like attracts like" is ancient Hermetic teaching.
DERIVED: none.
TRADITION: the Hermetica teach correspondence between levels of
  reality — not that thought magnetises events. The two ideas
  are distinct.
MODERN LAYER: the doctrine as sold today is New Thought: Atkinson,
  *Thought Vibration* (1906), through *The Secret* (2006). The
  phrase itself circulates from the late 19th century.
UNSETTLED: nothing material.
SHELF-MARK: for the Hermetica, yes; for an "ancient law of
  attraction", none.
VERDICT: A 1906 doctrine retro-dated seventeen centuries.
  Correspondence is Hermetic; attraction-marketing is not:
  thehermeticum.com/ideas/as-above-so-below/

“Enochian is the primordial language of angels”

CLAIM: Enochian is the original angelic tongue from before Babel.
DERIVED: the material itself is fully documented — you can read
  its production in the sources.
TRADITION: received by John Dee and Edward Kelley in scrying
  sessions, 1582–1589, recorded in Dee's diaries as it happened.
MODERN LAYER: the name "Enochian" and the ceremonial systems
  built on it are later constructions (Golden Dawn onward, 1880s+).
UNSETTLED: what Kelley was doing — the honest range runs from
  fraud to genuine visionary experience.
SHELF-MARK: yes — Dee's manuscripts survive (British Library,
  Sloane MSS).
VERDICT: A rare case with a birth certificate: the "primordial"
  language has minute-by-minute session notes from the 1580s.
  Context: thehermeticum.com/figures/john-dee/

“Hermes Trismegistus wrote 42 sacred books”

CLAIM: Hermes wrote exactly 42 books containing all knowledge.
DERIVED: none — no such canon survives.
TRADITION: the number comes from Clement of Alexandria
  (*Stromateis* VI, c. 200 CE), describing 42 "indispensable"
  books carried in Egyptian temple processions. Other ancient
  authors give 20,000 or 36,525 — numbers chosen for symbolism,
  not inventory.
MODERN LAYER: "the lost 42 books of Hermes" as a recoverable
  secret library — esoteric publishing, 19th–21st c.
UNSETTLED: what the procession books actually contained.
SHELF-MARK: for Clement, yes; for the 42 books, none — they are
  a description, not a surviving collection.
VERDICT: A real ancient sentence about books, not a real ancient
  bookshelf. Who Hermes was: thehermeticum.com/figures/hermes-trismegistus/

“The Emerald Tablet says: as within, so without”

CLAIM: "As within, so without" is the Emerald Tablet.
DERIVED: the Tablet is short — you can check every clause.
TRADITION: the text says above/below ("quod est inferius est
  sicut quod est superius"), first attested in Arabic, 8th–9th c.
  No within/without clause exists in any early version.
MODERN LAYER: the inward-psychological expansion is New Thought
  and later self-help, 20th century, popularised alongside the
  Kybalion's reading.
UNSETTLED: nothing — the clause list is finite and checkable.
SHELF-MARK: yes — the Arabic and Latin texts survive.
VERDICT: A modern rhyme grafted onto an old trunk. Every real
  clause, with what it does not settle:
  thehermeticum.com/texts/emerald-tablet/clauses/

“Reality Transurfing is ancient hidden knowledge”

CLAIM: Transurfing transmits knowledge older than its author.
DERIVED: none.
TRADITION: none — no line of transmission is named or citable.
MODERN LAYER: the whole system. Began circulating in Russia in
  2003; international bestseller 2005–2006. "Vadim Zeland" is a
  pen name; the biography is self-reported.
UNSETTLED: who, if anyone, the credited "guardians" are.
SHELF-MARK: none — unnamed guardians who decline to appear leave
  nothing to verify; unfalsifiable by design.
VERDICT: A 2003 system, dated and undisputed as such. The
  antiquity is claimed only for the contents, by the same
  architecture the Kybalion used in 1908.

“The Key of Solomon was written by King Solomon”

CLAIM: The grimoire Key of Solomon is King Solomon's own work.
DERIVED: none.
TRADITION: Solomon's reputation as a spirit-commanding king is
  genuinely ancient (Josephus, 1st c. CE; Testament of Solomon,
  early centuries CE). The *Key* itself: oldest known manuscripts
  are late-medieval and Renaissance; the Greek *Hygromanteia*
  precedes the Latin/Italian versions.
MODERN LAYER: printed editions and Mathers's 1889 translation
  fixed the modern text.
UNSETTLED: the grimoire's exact date and place of composition.
SHELF-MARK: yes — the manuscripts exist and are catalogued;
  none is remotely ancient Israel.
VERDICT: Pseudepigraphy working as designed: an old royal name
  lending authority to a much later book.

Run it on your own claim

The method is a free, copyable prompt that works in any AI chat — on the tool page. If a card above seems wrong, that is checkable too: every date names its source, which is the entire difference between this and a listicle.

Fair questions

Is Reality Transurfing ancient hidden knowledge?

No. Vadim Zeland’s system began circulating in Russia in 2003 and the books were international bestsellers by 2005–2006. Age is claimed only for the contents, credited to guardians the author does not name — the same architecture the Kybalion used in 1908. Full dating: Reality Transurfing.

Is tarot really from ancient Egypt?

No. Tarot is attested as a 15th-century Italian card game; the Egyptian-initiation reading was asserted by Court de Gébelin in 1781, without evidence and before hieroglyphs could be read. The occult tarot built on that claim is real and influential — as an 18th–19th-century tradition.

Did Tesla really say the 3, 6 and 9 quote?

There is no source. The sentence appears in no known Tesla writing, lecture, patent or interview; it circulates unattributed online and surged with the 2010s numerology revival. Absence of a source, after this much searching, is the finding.

Are the seven chakras ancient?

The practices are ancient; the fixed system of exactly seven — with colours and glands — is a 20th-century Western standardisation (Woodroffe 1919, Leadbeater 1927). Medieval tantric texts give five, six, nine or more centres, depending on lineage.

Why do several cards end with the claim partly surviving?

Because the method dates layers rather than debunking. Enochian has a documented 1580s birth; Solomon’s spirit-commanding reputation is genuinely ancient even though the grimoire is not; the Emerald Tablet is genuinely old even though ‘as within, so without’ is not in it. What survives, survives with a date.

Sources & further reading

Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif, vol. VIII (Paris, 1781) — the birth of the Egyptian-tarot claim.
Arthur Avalon (John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power (London, 1919); C. W. Leadbeater, The Chakras (Adyar, 1927) — the Western seven-chakra standard.
Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis VI (c. 200 CE) — the 42 books in procession.
Dee’s angelic diaries, British Library Sloane MSS — the documented birth of ‘Enochian’, 1582–1589.
Atkinson, W. W., Thought Vibration, or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World (Chicago, 1906).
S. L. MacGregor Mathers (trans.), The Key of Solomon the King (London, 1889) — the fixing of the modern grimoire text.
On this site: Tarot, John Dee, Hermes Trismegistus, the Emerald Tablet clause by clause.