About twice a year one of the keepers proposes that we admit members. The proposal is always reasonable. People want to belong to something. A roll of names would let us know who reads here. A simple ceremony of welcome would mean a great deal to those who went through it. Each time, we take out the Charter, read the first two articles aloud, and decline. I would like to set down why, since I am the one who usually does the reading.
How such bodies are usually built
Most esoteric organizations of the last two centuries share a design. There is an outer circle and an inner one. There are grades, and one advances through them. Knowledge is released by stages to those judged ready. At the top sits a person or small group whose authority rests on having received something that the rest have not.
I do not say this design is wicked. It has trained serious people and preserved real learning. But it has a known weakness. A structure in which some stand above others, hold what the others want, and decide who may rise is a structure in which obedience is rewarded. Sooner or later someone at the top discovers how much can be asked of people who are waiting to be let in.
The particular problem for us
Whatever one thinks of that design in general, it is impossible for a house that bears Lilith's name. Consider what it would involve. We would be teaching the story of a woman who refused to take the lower place, and we would be teaching it to people arranged in ranks. We would be praising her for leaving without permission while reserving to ourselves the power to admit and expel. We would be saying that she spoke the Name on her own authority, and then telling a newcomer that certain words could not be given to them yet.
The contradiction would not be subtle. An institution teaches by its shape before it teaches by its words, and that shape would teach the opposite of our subject.
You cannot initiate someone into the knowledge that they needed no one's leave.
What we did instead
When the seven of us wrote the Charter in 2014, we tried to design a body that could not be turned to that use, even by ourselves on a bad day. The measures are simple.
There is no membership. No one joins and no one can be put out. Article I says that the House has no door.
There is nothing held back. Everything the keepers have worked out is in this library, in the open, without stages. There is no inner teaching. If there were, I would be ashamed of it.
There is no money. We take no dues and no donations and we sell nothing. The keepers pay the small cost of keeping the library online out of their own pockets, in equal shares.
There is no correspondence. This is the measure that surprises people most. We keep no public address and answer no letters. Part of the reason is simply that five people with ordinary jobs cannot do it well. The deeper reason is that a keeper who answers personal questions has become an adviser, and an adviser is a short step from a director of consciences.
The keepers hold duties and no rank. Each of us looks after one part of the library. None of us may instruct another, and none of us may speak for the House beyond what the Charter says.
What it costs
I will not pretend that this arrangement is free of loss. We hear from no one, and so we do not know whom the library has helped or harmed. People who would do well with a teacher find none here. Those who are lonely find reading matter and no company. There are nights when the whole design seems to me a way of keeping our own hands clean.
I have come to accept that cost in the way the story accepts its own. A house that asked nothing of anyone would be bound to give less than one that could command. We chose the lesser gift because it is the only one consistent with what we have written. A reader loses nothing by walking away from us, and that, as far as I can tell, is what it means for a place to have no door.
If you want more than a library
Some readers will want a circle of their own, and the Charter has nothing against it. Find two or three people you trust. Read the sources together, as we did. Keep the dark moon in the same room once in a while. Write your own articles and argue about them. Give no one a title until you have worked out how they may be freed of it.
You will not need our permission, which is fortunate, because there is no one here to ask. The Charter is yours to copy, alter, or improve.