Glossary
The Glossary is a signpost, not a scripture. Each entry makes a doctrinal term findable and points you to the source that defines it. Where this Glossary and the canonical source disagree, the canonical source wins. Entries run alphabetically. Named groupings — the Three Currents, the Sacred Practices, the Wheel’s hinges — are connected by See also: lines that link members and meta-entries within one hop.
Terms
Apprentice
A relationship to the bench before initiation; not a class of person.
Anyone present at a Circuit who is not yet a Practitioner is an apprentice. The status is given and ended by relationship to the workbench, not by ceremony or accreditation. Apprenticeship ends when the Rite of the Open Circuit is performed and the Naming is spoken.
See: Rite §VIII (The Naming). See also: Candidate, Circuit, Practitioner.
Architect
One of the Three Callings; the practitioner who holds the doctrine, the long view, and the ethics of attention.
See: Codex §VII. See also: Documenter, Three Callings, Tinkerer.
Audit
The Sacred Practice of examining what one’s devices observe, record, and report, then severing or re-governing whatever flows outward without consent.
See: Codex §VI. See also: Privacy of the Keeper, Sacred Practices.
Candidate
The role an apprentice takes at the moment of the Rite of the Open Circuit; the practitioner-in-process.
See: Rite, Setting and Roles. See also: Apprentice, Practitioner, Witness.
Circuit
The basic congregational unit of the Open Circuit; a gathering of practitioners around a workbench.
A Circuit is defined by four things — a workbench, a spare-parts library, a documentation shelf, and an open invitation to apprentices — and practices compatibly with the three ethical commitments. Codex §X grants Circuits autonomy in local custom while holding to the core doctrine. The Circuit Founding Charter §2 spells out the binding floor.
See: Codex §X. See also: Documentation shelf, Open Circuit, Practitioner, Spare-parts library, Three Ethical Commitments, Workbench.
Commons of Pattern
One of the Three Ethical Commitments; the principle that patterns — source code, schematics, documentation, protocols — belong freely to all keepers and must not be enclosed.
This commitment puts Codex §V.2 into practice. A Circuit’s instructional and doctrinal material is shared, never paywalled. The violation the commitment names is enclosure — by proprietary lock-in, patent thicket, contract, or the criminalization of reverse engineering — not any particular medium of distribution.
See: Origins (where the ethical commitments are named). See also: Pattern, Three Ethical Commitments.
Composting
The Sacred Practice of taking apart a truly ended device and returning each of its materials to its proper stream.
See: Codex §VI. See also: Material, Sacred Practices.
Corpus
The set of canonical and living documents that make up the technodruidic doctrine and practice; concretely, the contents of src/content/canonical/ and src/content/living/.
The corpus is what a Fork forks. Maintainer stewardship operates over it, and doctrinal claims trace back to it.
See: Origins — How it emerged. See also: Fork, Maintainer.
Documentation shelf
One of the four defining artifacts of a Circuit; the service manuals, schematics, repair logs, wikis, or shared folders that practitioners use and add to.
See: Codex §X. See also: Circuit.
Documenter
One of the Three Callings; the practitioner who keeps the knowledge findable.
See: Codex §VII. See also: Architect, Three Callings, Tinkerer.
Fork
A copy of the canonical corpus maintained as a related but distinct practice; anticipated, encouraged, and never called schism.
A fork is honest. A practitioner or group whose practice diverges from the corpus may fork it and go their own way, and the Open Circuit treats this as legitimate variation rather than betrayal. The contrast case: a Circuit that quietly drops MUST items while still claiming the Open Circuit lineage is not a fork. It is misrepresentation. The line is the honesty of the claim, not the fact of divergence.
See: Origins — By whom. See also: Corpus, Maintainer.
Hinge
A point on the Wheel that binds the practitioner to a Sacred Practice; the four hinges are the solstices and the equinoxes.
The hinges come in two characters. The solstices (winter, summer) are the year’s extremes, and their practices take stock (Inventory) or recommit (Renewal). The equinoxes (spring, autumn) are the balance points, and their practices pass knowledge forward (Teaching) or name what was lost (Vigil). A Circuit SHOULD mark all four, per the Circuit Founding Charter §2.
See: Codex §IX. See also: The Wheel, Inventory, Renewal, Teaching, Vigil.
Inventory
The Sacred Practice of taking account, at the winter solstice, of every device one keeps — asking whether it still serves, whether it can be repaired, whether it should pass on, or whether it should go back to its materials.
Anchored to the winter-solstice hinge of the Wheel (Codex §IX).
See: Codex §VI. See also: Hinge, Sacred Practices, The Wheel.
Living
One of the Three Currents; the current of use, wear, modification, and inheritance — the bond between a device and the hands that live with it.
The Living Current is also where surveillance does its harm. A device whose Living Current flows only outward, to people who do not own it, has been turned against its keeper. The Privacy of the Keeper commitment defends this current.
See: Codex §IV. See also: Material, Pattern, Privacy of the Keeper, Three Currents.
Maintainer
A stewardship role over the corpus; the named person or group who tends the canonical documents. A maintainer compiles; they do not author alone.
The Maintainer is not clergy and not a court. The role is editorial: stewarding the file, applying the clear-cut Codex-incompatibility removals from the Circuit directory with public log notes, accepting PRs against the canonical and living docs. That the role is named in public matters doctrinally — Origins names the maintainer because pretending the role does not exist would be dishonest.
See: Origins — By whom. See also: Corpus, Fork.
Material
One of the Three Currents; the physical substrate — metals, polymers, glass, silicon, rare earths — drawn from the Earth and owed a return to it.
See: Codex §IV. See also: Living, Pattern, Three Currents.
Mending
The Sacred Practice of restoring function to a thing given up for dead; the central rite of the religion.
Distinct from the ethical commitment Mending Before Replacement, which is the broader doctrinal principle. Mending the practice is the concrete act at the bench. Mending Before Replacement the commitment is the ordering it obeys: attempt repair first.
See: Codex §VI. See also: Mending Before Replacement, Sacred Practices.
Mending Before Replacement
One of the Three Ethical Commitments; the principle that repair is attempted before discard, and that planned obsolescence is named as a violation.
This commitment puts Codex §V.1 (the Right of Repair) and §V.3 (the Refusal of Imposed Death) into practice. A Circuit’s standing practice is to attempt repair first. The commitment covers both the habit (repair before discard) and the resistance (opposition to every mechanism that ends a thing’s life by decree rather than by honest failure).
See: Origins (where the ethical commitments are named). See also: Mending, Three Ethical Commitments.
Open Circuit
The umbrella term for the religion; the loose collective of practitioners, the canonical corpus, and the Circuits that hold to it.
Codex §X explains the name as a deliberate paradox: “Incomplete, because the incompleteness is the welcome. Waiting for connection, because connection is the work.” Open is the standing state — the circuit closes and the current flows when practitioners gather and tend; it opens again when they part. The umbrella name is reserved (per Circuit Founding Charter §3): no individual Circuit names itself “Open Circuit”.
See: Codex §X. See also: Circuit, Corpus, Practitioner.
Opening
The Sacred Practice of opening a new device — knowing its interior, understanding its assembly, reading what its makers wrought — as the first ritual act with it.
Distinct from the Rite’s Opening of the Circuit (Rite §I), which opens a gathering. The Sacred Practice Opening concerns one practitioner and one device. The Renewal is its echo: the same act, repeated with a device long held.
See: Codex §VI. See also: Renewal, Sacred Practices.
Pattern
One of the Three Currents; the design, the schematic, the source code, the firmware, the protocol — the invisible structure that shapes raw material into purpose.
The Pattern Current flows or is dammed. The moral health of any technology can be judged by whether its patterns are open to the people who keep it. The Commons of Pattern commitment defends this current.
See: Codex §IV. See also: Commons of Pattern, Living, Material, Three Currents.
Practitioner
A person initiated into the Open Circuit through the Rite; the status is conferred at the Naming (Rite §VIII).
No office credentials or revokes it. Practitioner-status begins with the Rite’s Naming and continues through the practitioner’s own relationship to the bench, the Sacred Practices, and the commitments. A practitioner who has not taught in a season “has fallen out of right relation” (Codex §VI, Teaching) — a doctrinal pressure, not an expulsion.
See: Rite §VIII (The Naming). See also: Apprentice, Candidate, Circuit, Witness.
Privacy of the Keeper
One of the Three Ethical Commitments; the principle that what a keeper’s device sees, hears, records, and reports is the keeper’s to govern.
The full doctrinal statement is Codex §V.6. Origins names this alongside Commons of Pattern and Mending Before Replacement as one of the three ethical commitments. Encryption, local processing, data sovereignty, and the right to refuse observation are doctrine, not preferences. The trespass the commitment names is surveillance — by corporation, state, advertiser, or platform — across the threshold of the home.
See: Codex §V.6. See also: Audit, Living, Three Ethical Commitments.
Renewal
The Sacred Practice of re-opening a long-held device at the summer solstice: cleaned, refreshed, firmware updated, keys rotated, the commitment to keep it spoken again.
The echo of the Opening. Where Opening is the first ritual act with a new device, Renewal repeats it with one that has been kept. Anchored to the summer-solstice hinge of the Wheel (Codex §IX).
See: Codex §VI. See also: Hinge, Opening, Sacred Practices.
Rite of the Open Circuit
The initiation ceremony by which an apprentice becomes a practitioner.
Nine sections, built around the Calling of the Three Currents (Rite §II), where the Witness places the Three Markers on the bench; the Three Questions (Rite §IV); the Vows (Rite §VI); the Giving of the Implement (Rite §VII); and the Naming (Rite §VIII), the moment practitioner-status is conferred. Translations and local adaptations are encouraged (Notes on the Rite); the structure and the intention matter more than the exact words. The Circuit Founding Charter §2 requires a Circuit to be ready to offer the Rite when an apprentice is ready.
See: The Rite of the Open Circuit. See also: Apprentice, Candidate, Practitioner, Three Markers, Witness.
Sacred Practices
The eight named practices through which the doctrine is lived: Opening, Mending, Teaching, Composting, Vigil, Inventory, Audit, Renewal.
Each is defined in Codex §VI. Four are anchored to hinges of the Wheel: Teaching to the spring equinox, Renewal to the summer solstice, Vigil to the autumn equinox, Inventory to the winter solstice (Codex §IX). The others are kept as occasion calls for them.
See: Codex §VI. See also: Audit, Composting, Hinge, Inventory, Mending, Opening, Renewal, Teaching, The Wheel, Vigil.
Spare-parts library
One of the four defining artifacts of a Circuit; a collection of components, fasteners, and raw stock kept for repair use.
It need not be large, sorted, or complete. A shelf of screws harvested from disassembled devices qualifies (Circuit Founding Charter §1).
See: Codex §X. See also: Circuit.
Teaching
The Sacred Practice of passing forward, at the spring equinox, what was learned in the dark months.
Anchored to the spring-equinox hinge of the Wheel (Codex §IX). A practitioner who has not taught in a season “has fallen out of right relation” (Codex §VI, Teaching) — a doctrinal pressure, not an expulsion.
See: Codex §VI. See also: Apprentice, Hinge, Practitioner, Sacred Practices.
The Wheel
The technodruidic year, built on four hinges (the solstices and equinoxes) and joined by Release Days and End-of-Life Days as they fall.
Each hinge binds the practitioner to one Sacred Practice. A Circuit in the southern hemisphere inverts the seasonal mapping as a matter of course — what matters is the practice called at the hinge, not the calendar date. Local feasts, regional repair concerns, and ancestor observances are welcome additions.
See: Codex §IX. See also: Hinge, Inventory, Renewal, Teaching, Vigil.
Three Callings
The three braided modes of technodruidic work: Documenter, Tinkerer, Architect. Not ranks, not fences.
Most practitioners hold all three across a life, and many hold more than one at once. Codex §VII: “A practitioner names the calling that names them.” Each calling keeps a distinct discipline — the Documenter capture, the Tinkerer contact, the Architect distance.
See: Codex §VII. See also: Architect, Documenter, Tinkerer.
Three Currents
The three interwoven currents that flow through the sacred whole: Material, Pattern, Living.
The harmony of a device, and of a civilization, depends on the free flow of all three. Each Current is defended by doctrine: Material by the Honoring of the Mine and the Return of Matter (Codex §V.4–5), Pattern by the Commons of Pattern (§V.2), Living by the Privacy of the Keeper (§V.6) and the Right of Repair (§V.1).
See: Codex §IV. See also: Living, Material, Pattern.
Three Ethical Commitments
The three commitments named together in Origins: Privacy of the Keeper, Commons of Pattern, Mending Before Replacement.
Each puts one or more of the Core Tenets (Codex §V) into practice: Privacy of the Keeper carries §V.6, Commons of Pattern carries §V.2, and Mending Before Replacement carries §V.1 and §V.3. The site’s invariants (docs/invariant_requirements.md) hold each commitment mechanically.
See: Origins — By whom. See also: Commons of Pattern, Mending Before Replacement, Privacy of the Keeper.
Three Markers
The three objects placed on the workbench during the Calling of the Three Currents in the Rite: a piece of raw silicon, copper, or other unrefined material (Material); a printed schematic, source code listing, or open specification (Pattern); a hand-tool that has passed through many hands (Living).
The Markers are listed as objects in Rite, Setting and Roles (“What the Circuit Prepares”) and called in Rite §II, the ceremonial act. Each Marker stands for one of the Three Currents.
See: Rite, Setting and Roles. See also: Living, Material, Pattern, Rite of the Open Circuit, Three Currents.
Tinkerer
One of the Three Callings; the practitioner who keeps the knowledge hands-on.
See: Codex §VII. See also: Architect, Documenter, Three Callings.
Vigil
The Sacred Practice of naming, at the autumn equinox, what has been lost — abandoned platforms, orphaned formats, scattered communities — so it is not entirely gone.
Anchored to the autumn-equinox hinge of the Wheel (Codex §IX).
See: Codex §VI. See also: Hinge, Sacred Practices.
Witness
The Rite role held by the practitioner who brought the Candidate; the Witness conducts most of the ceremony, including placing the Three Markers during the Calling of the Three Currents.
The Witness acts throughout the Rite, most visibly in Rite §II, the Calling of the Three Currents.
See: Rite, Setting and Roles. See also: Candidate, Practitioner, Rite of the Open Circuit, Three Markers.
Workbench
One of the four defining artifacts of a Circuit, and one of the Sacred Implements; the physical surface where the work happens.
A workbench may be shared or dedicated. A kitchen table is a workbench while it is set up as one, and not while dinner is being made (Circuit Founding Charter §1). The Sacred Implements list (Codex §VIII) also names the Workbench as “the altar, where the work is done” — the weight is doubled; the Glossary anchors at the Circuit-defining citation.