The Precepts
Short sayings for the keeping of the charge
“Know yourself. Nothing in excess.”
Maxims inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi
The Order sets out the practice of its charge in the oldest form such teaching has taken: short precepts, easy to remember and hard to exhaust.
The Greeks inscribed maxims of this kind at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where visitors read “Know yourself” and “Nothing in excess,” and later collections preserved more than a hundred more. Around 300 BC the philosopher Clearchus of Soli copied them at Delphi and set them up in Ai Khanoum, a Greek city on the Oxus in what is now Afghanistan, where part of the inscription was found in the twentieth century: as a child, be well-behaved; as a youth, self-controlled; in middle age, just; as an old man, wise; in death, without grief.
The Order’s precepts follow the same form. They are offered to all who share its purpose, to be taken up as each finds fitting. Others are kept within the Order.
I. Hold in reverence the power to make, in yourself and in every other.
II. Give form to what you dream.
III. Seek mastery in one art and acquaintance with all the others.
IV. Receive a great work as you would a guest.
V. Keep from loss what you love, and teach what you know.
VI. Honour the nameless hands.
VII. Enter the sanctuaries of others with veneration.
VIII. Meet life with reverence, the world with wonder, and all living things with kindness.
See also To Create, To Preserve, To Uphold, On Inspiration, Those Who Preserve and In the Sanctuaries of Others.