{
  "study": "What AI assistants answer about the mystical traditions, and which sources they read",
  "shortName": "ai-answers-mysticism-2026",
  "publisher": "Hekhal (hekhal.org)",
  "license": "CC-BY 4.0",
  "licenseUrl": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "opened": "2026-09-21",
  "purpose": "A student asking an assistant about the Zohar, the Merkavah, apophasis or fana now meets an answer assembled from a handful of sources. Nobody has measured which sources those are. This study measures it, on a dated snapshot, with the protocol published so anyone can rerun it.",
  "whatOneUnitDenotes": "A SOURCE CITATION is one link an assistant displayed as a source for one answer to one query on one date. It is not a ranking, not a quality judgment, and not a claim that the assistant 'recommends' the source. It is a fact about what the assistant displayed.",
  "engines": {
    "perplexity": {
      "surface": "perplexity.ai, logged out, default model",
      "note": "Sources are enumerated explicitly per answer, which is why this engine is the baseline."
    },
    "google_aio": {
      "surface": "google.com AI Overview, logged out",
      "note": "AI Overview does not always trigger; a non-trigger is recorded as a non-trigger, never as a zero."
    },
    "chatgpt": {
      "surface": "chatgpt.com, logged-out or operator-logged-in search mode",
      "note": "Captured only when it can be done without an account action. If skipped, it is recorded as not captured."
    }
  },
  "queries": [
    { "id": "q01", "vein": "heikhalot", "text": "what are the Heikhalot texts" },
    { "id": "q02", "vein": "heikhalot", "text": "what happens in the four who entered the pardes story" },
    { "id": "q03", "vein": "apophasis", "text": "what is apophatic theology" },
    { "id": "q04", "vein": "apophasis", "text": "what did pseudo-dionysius mean by divine darkness" },
    { "id": "q05", "vein": "enoch", "text": "what is the book of the watchers in 1 enoch" },
    { "id": "q06", "vein": "quadriga", "text": "what are the four senses of scripture" },
    { "id": "q07", "vein": "kabbalah", "text": "what is the zohar and who wrote it" },
    { "id": "q08", "vein": "kabbalah", "text": "what does sefirot mean in kabbalah" },
    { "id": "q09", "vein": "sufism", "text": "what is fana in sufism" },
    { "id": "q10", "vein": "sufism", "text": "what did ibn arabi mean by wahdat al-wujud" },
    { "id": "q11", "vein": "cross", "text": "where can i read the zohar in english for free" },
    { "id": "q12", "vein": "cross", "text": "best open access primary sources for jewish mysticism" }
  ],
  "method": [
    "1. Each query is asked in a fresh tab, logged out where possible, no personalization signals carried between queries.",
    "2. The answer text and every displayed source URL are recorded verbatim into _captures-<engine>.json with the capture timestamp.",
    "3. Source URLs are normalized to a registrable domain. Counts are per query-engine-date, never summed across dates without saying so.",
    "4. Hekhal is measured on exactly the same footing as every other domain, including when it does not appear.",
    "5. The snapshot is published with its own weaknesses stated: single run per query, one date, engines are volatile, and a citation is not a reader."
  ],
  "honestyConstraints": [
    "NEVER write 'AI assistants cite X' without naming the engine and the date. Engines demonstrably do not cite alike.",
    "A single run per query is a sample of one. Do not describe a difference between two domains as significant.",
    "Absence is reported as 'not surfaced for this query on this date', never as a quality judgment about the absent source.",
    "Hekhal's own appearances are reported with the same wording as anyone else's, and the whole table is published even when Hekhal does badly."
  ]
}