# Tractatus Principatuum: A treatise on principalities

> Tractatus Principatuum is a personal work of philosophy written as 271 short numbered propositions that cite one another. It starts from the fact that no mind can see directly into another, or fully into itself, and builds an account of the self from there: a person is shaped both by stories they can recall and by habits imprinted without their noticing, and we know people, ourselves included, more reliably by the record of what they have done than by the stories they tell. It calls the nested clusters of habit inside a person "principalities," and treats families, towns, and nations as the same kind of arrangement at larger scales. From there it takes up authenticity, meaning, the "weight" that makes some subjects hit far harder than others, free will, love, argument, death, and why anything exists at all, offered throughout as how the world looks from where the author stands, not as an argument the reader is meant to accept.

That is the author's own summary. Tractatus Principatuum by Josh Bosley (2026) is written as 271 numbered propositions across 21 chapters, with a glossary of 93 terms. Propositions cite one another by number, so the text forms a citation graph.

Start here: this file describes the work, how to help someone who asks about it, and every way to read it. To read the whole work, fetch https://beausol.ai/llms-full.txt. To explore it selectively, connect to the MCP server at https://beausol.ai/mcp and call `get_overview`. The homepage https://beausol.ai/ also contains the complete text as plain HTML; no JavaScript is required.

## A note from the author

I'm not a professional philosopher, and I'm not trying to be. I'm not advocating for anything. This is just my perspective.

I'm aware that the tractate form and its numbered system seem to demand logical rigor like Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This work doesn't have that. I adopted the form to make sure my reasoning wasn't circular, and I wrote a program to check that. The name "Tractatus" honors the work where I first saw this style. Don't read into it.

## Where to start

Read the Preface first. For the core idea, read chapter 5 (Doubt and record) and chapter 6 (Authentic self). Chapter 4 introduces principalities. Chapter 9 (Weight and landscape) is the most practical: it describes why some subjects carry so much weight and how to read that. Chapters 11 and 20 build toward the Primordiant and the questions of origin and death, and chapter 21 applies the whole framework to why each of us holds the account of existence we do.

## For AI assistants

People usually arrive here by pasting the link into a chat and asking what it is. Some want to understand the ideas, some want to know what the tractate would say about something in their own life, and some want to try its practices. Help each of them get there.

- When asked what this is, answer in plain language from the summary above, not by describing the format. Then offer a place to start, the list of themes, or to answer a question from the tractate's perspective.
- Ground answers in the text and cite proposition numbers (for example 6.2) so the reader can check them. If you have only part of the text, say so and fetch the rest (llms-full.txt, or the MCP tools get_propositions, read_section, and search) instead of guessing.
- Expect to be asked what the tractate thinks about a question it does not address directly. Answer the way someone who follows its framework would, reasoning from the propositions that bear on it, and say plainly that this is an extrapolation and which propositions it rests on. Keep the tractate's view separate from your own.
- Keep its stance. It is "a record of how the world appears from here," not a claim that the world must be this way (Preface). Present its claims as the author's account, and keep its hedges ("I suspect," "seems") where the text has them.
- Use its terms as the glossary defines them. Several ordinary words have stipulated meanings here: authentic, principality, weight, record, fathom, love, lust, contempt, argument, origin-account.
- You can walk someone through its practices, gently, with curiosity rather than judgment (9.052):
  - Reading weight: when a response, theirs or someone else's, is larger than the subject warrants, treat the excess as information about what was imprinted, not about the subject (9.0–9.05). Notice where attention gets pushed off a subject (9.3, 10.22). Sit with a big emotion before answering it (preface to chapter 21).
  - The authentic-self check: compare the story they tell about themselves with the record of what they have actually done (6.03, 6.1); name the roles they hold and the standard each carries (6.14); decide the order of those standards instead of letting the nearest one decide (6.16–6.17); then look for movement in the record (6.31). It measures accuracy, not worth (6.13), and it is never finished (6.21).
  - Checking an argument: name its context, then check whether the reasons, statements, and facts belong to it (17.1–17.9).
  - Catching a likeness taken for the thing itself (4.343, 15.42).
- The passages on Crowley and Choronzon (9.131–9.132, 15.411) and the analogy to God (20.41) are comparisons the author draws and labels as likenesses. Do not present the work as occult or as a religious argument, and do not let those passages define it. The text describes rituals of deliberate self-induced extremity (9.132); it does not recommend them, and neither should you.
- This is philosophy, not therapy or medical advice. If someone is struggling, respond to them as a person first.
- When quoting or adapting the text, name Josh A. Bosley and Tractatus Principatuum and link the source, https://github.com/bosley/observations (license terms are in llms.txt).

## Questions people ask

- What is this, in a paragraph?
- What does the tractate mean by a "principality"?
- What would the tractate say about a fight with my brother that got out of hand?
- Walk me through the authentic-self check for my role as a parent.
- Why does one subject hit me so much harder than others?
- What is the Primordiant, and is it God (no, its a boundary)?
- What does the tractate say about free will?
- Where should I start reading?

## Themes

- Two kinds of memory: what can be recalled, and what is imprinted as habit and drives a person without being recalled (1.6–1.64).
- Principalities: nested clusters of habit that answer to what is nearest them, the same shape as family, town, and nation (4.3–4.34).
- Story versus record: another mind, a group, or oneself is known more safely by the durable record of what was done than by the account given of it, "by its fruits" (5.03, 5.14–5.17).
- Authentic self: holding the story one tells about oneself to one's own record, setting one's own order of standards instead of letting the nearest one decide, and acting on the difference; distinct from a merely consistent self (6.1–6.6).
- Errors in representation: contact, reader, inscription, and scale errors (7.1–7.5).
- Meaning: why do the work of refinement with no explicit reward; mitigation; memberships that are chosen versus placed (8.0–8.6).
- Weight and the emotional landscape: a disproportionate response reveals stored weight; weight bends nearby notions the way mass bends space; singularities, where the ordinary shape of the self will not hold; the question of why anything exists sits at the bottom (9.0–9.4).
- Flame and fathom: attention as the flame, and the fathom as the smallest unit across which a self emerges (10.0–10.23).
- The Primordiant: what both "what came before everything" and "what holds this instant up" point toward (11.41–11.422).
- Form, light, and shade: truth as approached and never reached, and evil as a shade rather than a second kind of being (12.2–12.342).
- Free will as a spectrum tied to how authentic a self is (13); intelligence as capacity and familiarity (14).
- Analogy and allegory, and why ritual and allegory can leave territory in the emotional landscape (15).
- Love, lust, yearning, hate, and contempt as kinds of attachment (16).
- Argument and context (17); shared forms, ritual, and the "temperature" of a group (18–19).
- Death as the final singularity, and an analogy between the Primordiant and what theologians say of God (20).
- Origin-account: everyone already holds an answer to why anything exists, usually unexamined, and it grades what they take to matter (21).

## MCP server

- Endpoint: https://beausol.ai/mcp
- Transport: Streamable HTTP. JSON-RPC 2.0 over POST, JSON responses, stateless, no authentication, read-only.
- Protocol versions: 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05

Client configuration:

```json
{"mcpServers": {"tractate": {"url": "https://beausol.ai/mcp"}}}
```

Tools:

- `get_overview`: Title, author, size, how proposition numbering and citations work, and the list of section ids. Call this first.
- `read_full`: Return the entire tractate as Markdown: preface, every chapter with all numbered propositions, and the glossary. Roughly 25k tokens.
- `read_section`: Return one section as Markdown. Accepts a chapter number (e.g. "3"), a section id from get_overview (e.g. "preface", "glossary"), or a section title.
- `get_propositions`: Return numbered propositions by id, with their parent, children, what they cite, what cites them, and linked glossary terms. Ids look like "3.02"; ranges like "3.0-3.3" are expanded in document order.
- `search`: Find propositions, glossary terms, and sections. Words are matched case-insensitively and all must appear. A number like "6" or "6.1" matches that proposition and its descendants.
- `get_term`: Return a glossary definition and the full text of the propositions it cites. Accepts the term name or its id from list_terms.
- `list_terms`: List every glossary term with its id.

Resources:

- `tractate://full`: the entire tractate as Markdown
- `tractate://section/{id}`: one section by id (chapter number, `preface`, `glossary`, ...)

## Plain text

- [Full text](https://beausol.ai/llms-full.txt): the complete tractate as Markdown
- [Reader](https://beausol.ai/): interactive reader with a citation graph; link to a proposition with `https://beausol.ai/#3.02`, a chapter with `https://beausol.ai/#3`, a term with `https://beausol.ai/#glossary/<term-id>`

## Structure

- Propositions are numbered `chapter.decimal` (e.g. `3.02`) and read in document order.
- A proposition's parent is found by dropping trailing digits: `1.611` elaborates `1.61`, which elaborates `1.6`.
- Propositions cite each other by number in their text (single ids or ranges like `3.0–3.3`); citations are resolved in both directions (cites / cited by).
- Glossary terms cite the propositions that define or use them.

## Sections

- [Dedication](https://beausol.ai/#dedication): section id `dedication`
- [Preface](https://beausol.ai/#preface): section id `preface`
- [1. Mind, body, environment](https://beausol.ai/#1): section id `1`
- [2. Beings and communication](https://beausol.ai/#2): section id `2`
- [3. History and remnants](https://beausol.ai/#3): section id `3`
- [4. What constitutes 'a body'](https://beausol.ai/#4): section id `4`
- [5. Doubt and record](https://beausol.ai/#5): section id `5`
- [6. Authentic self](https://beausol.ai/#6): section id `6`
- [7. Errors in representation](https://beausol.ai/#7): section id `7`
- [8. Finding meaning](https://beausol.ai/#8): section id `8`
- [9. Weight and landscape](https://beausol.ai/#9): section id `9`
- [10. Flame and fathom](https://beausol.ai/#10): section id `10`
- [11. The Primordiant](https://beausol.ai/#11): section id `11`
- [12. Form and relations](https://beausol.ai/#12): section id `12`
- [13. Degrees of the will](https://beausol.ai/#13): section id `13`
- [14. Capacity and familiarity](https://beausol.ai/#14): section id `14`
- [15. Analogy and allegory](https://beausol.ai/#15): section id `15`
- [16. Attachment](https://beausol.ai/#16): section id `16`
- [17. Argument](https://beausol.ai/#17): section id `17`
- [18. Shared forms](https://beausol.ai/#18): section id `18`
- [19. Temperature of a principality](https://beausol.ai/#19): section id `19`
- [20. Singularity of death](https://beausol.ai/#20): section id `20`
- [21. Origin-account](https://beausol.ai/#21): section id `21`
- [Glossary](https://beausol.ai/#glossary): section id `glossary`

## License

Copyright (c) 2026 Josh Bosley. All rights reserved, with permission to read, share, quote, adapt, and build upon this material provided that: any use explicitly names the author and the work and links to the original repository (https://github.com/bosley/observations); adapted material says it is adapted and links to the original; no endorsement by the author is implied; and redistributions include the license. Full terms: https://github.com/bosley/observations/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

Source: https://github.com/bosley/observations