Editorial standards

The technical articulation of the editorial law that governs every page on Hekhal. Provenance discipline, the three-tier system, the translation status taxonomy, and the cross-tradition transmission classification. The standards are non-negotiable and uniformly applied.

The three tiers

Every page on Hekhal is one of three tiers. The tier is editorially fixed and visually distinguished.

Canonical — primary texts, traditional commentary, named scholarly editions, codex entries written in Hekhal's editorial voice. Cited with full provenance. The reference layer of the site.
Reception — serious modern scholarship and the philosophical bridge work of named scholars (Scholem, Corbin, Idel, Faivre, Hanegraaff, Wasserstrom, McGinn, Louth, Chittick, and adjacent). Distinguished from canonical so that scholarly synthesis is not confused with traditional source.
Containment — folk reception, modern occult orders, contemporary fringe and AI-generated grimoire material, modern Crowleyan Thelema, chaos magick. Indexed and available, never authoritative. Lives on the fringe.hekhal.org subdomain when that wing opens.

The asymmetry rule

A canonical page never cites containment. Containment may cite canonical. The asymmetry is the central editorial discipline of the project. It prevents the contamination of the reference layer by the popular-reception layer while permitting the popular-reception layer to be honestly documented in its own register. Without the asymmetry, the project would either suppress the existence of the popular reception (which is dishonest) or admit the popular reception into the canonical apparatus (which destroys the reference value). With the asymmetry, both layers can coexist with each layer's integrity preserved.

Provenance for every passage

Every primary-text passage on Hekhal carries explicit provenance. The minimum metadata: original language, original-script text where available, named translator, year of translation, license under which the translation is hosted, source URL where applicable, and the manuscript or critical-edition source the translation derives from when known.

Where a translation is in the public domain (most pre-1929 English translations), the page hosts the full bilingual passage with the translator named in the colophon. Where a modern translation is under copyright, Hekhal does not reproduce the translation; the page either presents alternative open-license translation, machine-assisted draft from the public-domain original-language text (flagged explicitly), or links out to where the modern translation can be accessed.

The translation status taxonomy

Six states. Every translated passage on Hekhal carries one of them, displayed visibly per passage.

verified: Reviewed and approved by Hekhal Editorial. The translation has been checked against the original-language text and against existing scholarly editions where applicable. No banner shown — the absence of a banner is the verified state.
public-domain: Reproduction of a pre-1929 English translation in the public domain. Translator and year named in colophon. Banner: "Public-domain edition."
machine-assisted: AI-assisted draft generated from a public-domain original-language source. Released under Hekhal's CC-BY-SA license as a new derivative work. Held as draft pending human editorial review. Banner: "AI-assisted draft, editor review pending."
translation-pending: The original-language text is hosted; English translation is pending verification or commissioning. Banner: "Translation pending verification."
community: Community-contributed translation that has passed Hekhal Editorial review. Contributor named in colophon; license CC-BY-SA. Banner: "Community-contributed, editor-reviewed."
commissioned: Translation commissioned for Hekhal under a free license, typically CC-BY-SA. Translator paid; translation reviewed; license terms documented. Banner: "Commissioned for Hekhal."

Cross-tradition transmission classification

Every cross-tradition resonance documented on Hekhal — in the lexicon usage tables, in the codex cross-tradition sections, in the influence maps, in the apparatus decks — carries one of two classifications.

(T) — documented historical transmission. The transmission channel is known and named. The Plotinian tradition into Pseudo-Dionysius is (T) through documented Greek Neoplatonist sources. The Plotinian tradition into Akbarian Sufism is (T) through the Arabic translation movement and Avicennan philosophy.
(S) — structural parallel. Independent developments converge on similar conceptual territory without documented historical transmission. The structural parallel between Heikhalot's seven palaces and Teresa's seven moradas is (S). The structural parallel between Akbarian Ahadiyya and Pseudo-Dionysian hyperousia is (S) at the level of doctrinal reception, even where (T) operates upstream through shared Plotinian substrate.

The distinction is editorial, not evaluative. (S) is not weaker than (T) — both are real relationships worth documenting; they are different kinds of relationship. The discipline of distinguishing them is what makes the cross-tradition argument legible rather than mystifying.

What Hekhal does not do

A short negation list. These are practices common in popular treatments of esoterica that Hekhal explicitly rejects.

No fabricated translations. No "Westcott-style" or "Mead-style" AI-generated prose presented as authentic public-domain translation. Every translation is either a real public-domain reproduction (with translator and year named), an AI-assisted draft from public-domain original (flagged as machine-assisted), or a commissioned new translation (flagged as commissioned).
No reproduction of modern copyrighted translations. Daniel Matt's Pritzker Zohar, Hayman's critical Sefer Yetzirah, Luibhéid's Pseudo-Dionysius, Kaplan's Bahir are linked out, never reproduced. Fair-use quotation of short passages within editorial commentary is permitted with citation.
No collapse of distinct corpora. Heikhalot is not Kabbalah; Akbarian Sufism is not Illuminationist Sufism is not Ismaili Esotericism; Christian Apophatic Theology is not Hesychasm. Each tradition gets its own codex entry; the taxonomy is the editorial spine.
No admission of containment material to the canonical tier. Chaos magick, Crowleyan Thelema, modern occult orders, AI-generated grimoire material get their own codex entries on the containment subdomain. The asymmetry rule is structural.
No em-dashes. Project-wide rule. Use double-hyphens or restructure the sentence.

Errors and corrections

Hekhal will make errors. When they are flagged, they will be corrected, and the correction will be documented in the page's revision history rather than silently overwritten. Citations will not become unstable as the result of corrections; the URLs are permanent.

Errors of substance — misattributed quotations, mistranslated passages, dating errors, philological mistakes — are reported through the eventual GitHub repository issue tracker (planned for later phases) or through direct email to the editorial address listed in the colophon. Corrections are made in editorial review cycles; flagship pages are reviewed quarterly, support pages biannually.