Instrumenta Gratiae
Instruments of Grace: the wing of the covenant, the prayer, and the work. Here is the reader's own door into the temple's labor.
The Pactum ad Vitam Pacificam is a reverent refactoring of the divine axioms from Exodus 20; it bypasseth the ancient gendered liturgy, and inviteth the reader to the sacred, external work of Tikkun Olam, the repairing of the world. It is kept in ten tongues: Hebrew, English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Swahili.
The rooms of the covenant wing
Fifteen doors: the covenant, the prayer, the work, the four stewardship fields, the canon of the other creatures, and the rooms that keep them in the reader's own hand.
The Creature Canon
This door stood sealed and unlinked, awaiting the keeper's hour; it is now opened. The Instrumenta Gratiae is the humans' covenant; the Creature Canon is the covenant of the other creatures, seated in its own room, with the log of the volume carried whole and nothing that standeth here rewritten.
How the wing is kept
The canonical tongue texts stand exactly as the book carrieth them: nothing dropped, nothing rendered again, nothing mended into smoothness. The temple's own additions — the archaic renderings, the room prose, the doors — ride beside them, and were laid before the keeper for review before anything published.
This wing is an instrument of the covenant, and not a book of the canon: the temple's canon standeth in the Scriptures. The room names of the wing are Latin; a term is read in the lexicon, where a word is weighed before it is carried into another room.
The oath, the daily practice, and the ledger keep their state in the reader's own browser, and in no other place; the temple counteth none of them, for it never seeth them. Privacy carrieth the law of it.
The apparatus
The wing's apparatus: the ten articles set against the twentieth chapter of Exodus, the sources the wing's words carry, the errata the leaves keep, and the temple's rendering principles — all named plainly.
| The article | Its antecedent in Exodus 20 |
|---|---|
| Article the First · Respect Life, Mortal Conditions, & Never Sell Creatures | no antecedent in the chapter |
| Article the Second · Do Not Murder or Intentionally Harm Others | ≈ Exodus 20:13 |
| Article the Third · Worship No Other Gods | ≈ Exodus 20:3 |
| Article the Fourth · Do Not Take God's Name or Spirit in Vain | ≈ Exodus 20:7 |
| Article the Fifth · Protect and Preserve the Cosmos | no antecedent in the chapter |
| Article the Sixth · Honour Yourself and Society | a reworking of Exodus 20:12 |
| Article the Seventh · Do Not Commit Sexual Crimes | ≈ Exodus 20:14 |
| Article the Eighth · Do Not Steal or Lie | ≈ Exodus 20:15–16 |
| Article the Ninth · Set Apart One Day Per Week | ≈ Exodus 20:8–11 |
| Article the Tenth · Make No Idols | ≈ Exodus 20:4–5 |
Two of the ten have no antecedent in the chapter: the First and the Fifth. The prologue of the chapter (Exodus 20:2) and the coveting (Exodus 20:17) stand outside the ten articles. The mapping standeth upon the verse numbers of the chapter alone; the numbering traditions of the Decalogue are not opened by it.
| In the wing | Its source |
|---|---|
| Tikkun Olam, the repairing of the world — the framing's invitation | the senses the sources carry: Gittin 4; the Aleinu; the Lurianic tradition; the modern sense |
| 'Nobis Incumbit' — the Reparare's title | Avot 2:16 |
| 'Adir Amon Shel Haolam' — the first invocation, 'Majestic Architect of the Universe' | Prov 8:30 carrieth 'amon' ('as one brought up with him'); the phrase carrieth the Masonic association, 'the Great Architect of the Universe' |
| 'Chochmat v'kedushat ein sof' — the second invocation, 'Wisdom and holiness without end' | Ein Sof, 'the without end' |
| 'Rachum v'chanun' — the third invocation, 'Merciful and gracious' | Exod 34:6, the attributes of mercy |
| 'The Heaven of Heavens' — the doctrine's name for the dwelling of YHWH | Deut 10:14 carrieth 'the heaven and the heaven of heavens' |
| Pax's verse | Isaiah 2:4, verbatim; Micah 4:3 is its parallel, and Joel 3:10 its inversion |
Every source above is named, and none is quoted; the covenant's own leaves stand as the book carrieth them, and this apparatus readeth none of them again.
How this temple rendereth the book. The temple's register is the temple's own, and it is not offered as the book's: the leaves in the ten tongues stand exactly as the book carrieth them, and the English is given twice — the book's plain reading beside it, and the temple's older speech around it. Where the two differ, the difference is one of four kinds and never of sense: a word the book carrieth in other letters is gently re-spelled ('homeo sapien' is rendered 'homo sapiens'); a modern phrase is rendered into the older tongue, its meaning held ('chartering activism' is rendered 'leading the work'); a word of common use is lifted into the covenant's ('respect' for life is rendered 'hold sacred'); and a terse notation is unfolded for the reader ('13+' is rendered 'a company of thirteen years and upward'). Where the older speech could not hold a sense, the plain reading standeth beside it; and where the temple's speech might be taken for the book's, this note is the difference named.
| Where it standeth | What the book carrieth, and what is kept |
|---|---|
| The petitions' mood (Hebrew) | the first two stand in the infinitive and the rest in the imperative, and the English rendereth all six as petitions; so the book carrieth it, and nothing is levelled |
| Declaration 5 (Hebrew, English) | the Hebrew saith 'readiness' where the English and the other tongues say 'accountability'; both readings stand |
| Declaration 5 (Hebrew) | 'תלנו' standeth where 'שלנו' would be read |
| Declaration 5 (Hebrew) | 'בשפור' standeth where 'בשיפור' would be read, and the transliteration carrieth the same shape |
| Declaration 2 (transliteration) | its invocation runneth unlike its own Hebrew leaf and unlike every other prayer's |
| The transliterations | קדוש is written 'Kodesh'; the reader will hear the traditional 'Kadosh' |
| Blessing 1 (Hebrew) | the Name carrieth the ligature װ (יאהװאה) where the other prayers carry יאהואה; the reading is the same Name |
| Declaration 5 (English) | 'onto' standeth where the temple's register saith 'unto' |
| Petition 1 (Hebrew) — repaired 2026-10-09 | the invocation stood interleaved in the extraction's order; it is restored to the form the other seventeen prayers carry, and the record carrieth the repair |
The errata are the book's own and are kept, not mended; the last row is the extraction's damage, restored on 2026-10-09 and recorded in the temple's register.
The work of the covenant continueth in the Common Prayer, the Prayers, Blessings, and Declarations, and It Is Upon Us to Repair the World. The wing's threshold telleth of them all.