about the project

Hekhal היכל هيكل

An open, rigorously sourced public reference for the contemplative, mystical, and esoteric traditions of the world.

What this is

Hekhal is a public reference library for the inner traditions. The word names what the project is: an inner chamber where serious texts can be read carefully. The site collects primary sources, traditional commentary, and modern scholarship across Jewish, Islamic, Christian, Hellenistic, and Western esoteric traditions, and develops a purpose-built translation engine for the literatures themselves.

Where a text is in the public domain we publish it. Where translation is required we name the translator and the license. Nothing is presented without provenance. The editorial discipline is the project's whole reputation.

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three tiers, structurally distinct

Editorial law

I

Canonical

Primary texts, traditional commentary, Hekhal's own codex entries on a corpus. Provenance always. Translator named. Original language hosted alongside.

gold register · zod-enforced
II

Reception

Modern scholarship and philosophical bridge work. Scholem, Corbin, Idel, Faivre, Hanegraaff, Wasserstrom. Distinguished visually so scholarly synthesis is not confused with traditional source.

sober register · cited, never authoritative
III

Containment

Folk reception, modern occult orders, contemporary fringe, AI-generated grimoire material. Indexed and available, never authoritative.

fringe.hekhal.org · separate subdomain
the asymmetry rule

A canonical page never cites containment. Containment may cite canonical. The asymmetry is the central editorial discipline of the project.

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six legitimate sourcing paths

The library at scale

Comprehensive coverage is built from six paths combined, with every passage carrying its translation-status marker visible to the reader.

  1. i. Pre-1929 public-domain translations. Westcott, Mathers, Mead, Parker, MacKenna, Jowett, Inge, Underhill, Sparrow, Nicholson, Legge, Arnold. The foundational layer.
  2. ii. Sefaria's CC-BY corpus. Hebrew-Aramaic Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, large portions of the Aramaic Zohar. Republishable freely with attribution.
  3. iii. Original-language ancients. Every Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Pali, classical Chinese mystical text predating the twentieth century is unimpeachably public-domain.
  4. iv. Commissioned translations under CC-BY-SA. Volunteer or paid translators contribute under a free license.
  5. v. Targum. AI-assisted fresh translations from public-domain originals, flagged machine-assisted until human editor sign-off. The novel contribution.
  6. vi. Fair-use quotation. Modern copyrighted translations cited within editorial commentary, never reproduced wholesale.
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refusal clauses

Not a devotional site. Not an order, school, or initiatory body. Not a marketplace of practices. Not a place to argue cosmology.

The texts are presented for reading and study; what readers do with them is their own affair.

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the rest of the manifesto

Read further

i.

Why this site exists

The project's manifesto, the gap it fills, what it proposes.
ii.

Editorial standards

Provenance discipline, three-tier system, translation-status taxonomy, (T)/(S) cross-tradition classification.
iii.

Methodology

How Hekhal approaches cross-tradition study; the four-test corpus definition; the library sourcing strategy.
iv.

Sources and editions

Public-domain editions Hekhal hosts and modern critical editions referenced.
v.

Targum experiments

The translation engine: architecture, three Phase-1 experiments, audit trail, beta application.