Amendment Instrument No. 1 — The Five Seats and the Two Doors
Preamble
Adopted under the Declaration's Article VII.1: append-only, dated, stating what it changes, what it preserves, and what it supersedes. Nothing is deleted. The Declaration of 2026-10-24 remains the founding instrument; this instrument amends it by addition.
This is the first exercise of the amendment power. It is exercised by the Permanent Anchor alone, because no Keeper Council yet exists. That loneliness is temporary by design: Article 8 of this instrument sunsets the founder-alone amendment power at the first countersignature of an elected Council. The bootstrap binds itself.
Article 1 — The Two Doors (foundational; double-locked)
There are two doors into change, and they are never, under any circumstance, merged.
Door A — Governance. The structure of the Hearth — seats, terms, calendars, procedures, this instrument — is amended by an 85% supermajority of eligible members, under the quorum rule of Article 5.
Door B — Doctrine. The Articles of Belief are amended only by the Register of Refutations, by evidence bearing on a claim, as the Declaration's Article VII.2 already provides. No vote, of any size, at any turnout, ever alters doctrine. A vote cannot produce evidence. Equally, no refutation, however strong, alters a governance article; it may onlymotivate a member to propose one through Door A.
Entrenchment. This Article 1 may itself be amended only through both doors at once: an 85% supermajority AND a Register entry carrying evidence that the merge is required. The double lock is deliberate. It is meant to be nearly impossible.
Article 2 — The Five Seats
The Keeper Council is five seats, on the topology of the Five Wombs.
The four rotating seats are the four wombs at r>0 — Mind, Soul, Psyche, Heart — held by elected members, six-month terms, max two consecutive terms in the same seat, then rotation out of that seat (re-election to a different seat, or later to the same seat non-consecutively, is unrestricted).
The Permanent Seat is the Womb of the Self — ℵ₀, the ground at r=0. It does not rotate, because the ground is what does not rotate; the four quarters orbit it. Held by the founder for life. It carries one vote, equal, and the casting vote on a 2-2 tie — and nothing else: no veto, no immunity. The Permanent Seat's decisions are refusable like any other. The seat passes with the Fire (Declaration Art. XIII) to the Fire's inheritor, or dissolves if the Fire passes to no one; the four then hold the orbit alone until they choose otherwise through Door A.
Article 3 — Bootstrap
- Interim Council. Until the first election, the Permanent Keeper may appoint up to four interim Keepers. Every appointment sunsets at the next solstice election, whatever its outcome.
- First election. Held at the first solstice election window following the point at which the congregation reaches seven eligible members (seven, for the days of initiation).
- Eligibility. A member is eligible to vote who (a) has affirmed the purpose (Declaration Art. V.1) and (b) has kept the practice in the trailing cycle, as the cadence ledger records. The ledger is the roll; no other credential exists.
Article 4 — The Calendar (the solstice axis)
Canonical clock: UTC. UTC has no daylight-saving; every ritual hour below is unambiguous forever.
Elections are held twice a year, in the solstice weeks — the last week of June and the last week of December. The fire at its two extremes; the wheel turning at the year's two turnings.
The petition week is the seven days ending on the solstice day:
- Days 1–5: petitions. Members publish signed petitions for a Womb seat — the seven days of initiation re-enacted as remembrance.
- Day 6: voting opens at 06:00 UTC (the sixth hour) and closes at 18:00 UTC (the evening sixth hour).
- Day 7 (the solstice): results are published, verified, and the new Council is instantiated at 11:11 UTC. The wheel turns on the turning of the year.
Petitions, ballots, tallies, and results are appended to the School's ledger; the ledger is append-only and is never edited.
Article 5 — Quorum and the Empty Bench (evolutionary)
Empty seats are not a crisis. The ground holds the quarters until they are peopled. Any seat unfilled after an election — for want of petitions, votes, or members — is held in trust by the Permanent Seat, which exercises its vote only as the trustee of that Womb's domain until a member fills it. If no petitions are received, no election is held; the Council continues as constituted; the fact is recorded, honestly, in the ledger. Lack of pressure in the congregation is data, not failure.
Amendment quorum (Door A). An amendment passes at 85% of eligible members, with a validity floor of participation by a majority of eligible members or three members, whichever is greater. Below the floor, the vote is void and is recorded as void.
Council acts. Any act requiring Council countersignature requires a majority of filled seats. If zero rotating seats are filled, the Permanent Keeper acts alone, and every such act is sunset-labeled in the ledger until a Council exists.
Article 6 — Ties and Seat Assignment (the lot)
Prior service counts toward eligibility, never toward a seat, a tie, or an order. Service metrics must never steer the quarters; output metrics starve the Soul (Governance Instrument 001 §5), and the tradition will not starve itself by machinery.
The lot is sortition, and the ground chooses. A tie at any seat is broken, and the assignment of the four elected to the four Womb seats is decided, by:
draw = SHA-256( candidate public-key fingerprint ‖ election UUID ‖ publication minute )
computed at publication, published with the result, reproducible by anyone, steerable by no one. The lowest draw wins a tie; the four draws in order take the four seats. The ceremony at 11:11 UTC records the draws aloud; the hash is the witness.
Article 7 — Ballots and Keys
Ballots are OpenPGP-signed. Membership in the registry is a published public key plus affirmation plus practice; the ballot is a signed statement of the member's votes; the tally is reproducible from the published ballots; a Merkle root of the election record publishes with the result.
The private key is the member's, and no one else's — ever. Keys are generated by the member, at an initiation key ceremony, on the member's own device or offline. The Hearth — its site, its cluster, its Keepers, its Permanent Seat — never generates, holds, escrows, or transmits a member's private key. The registry publishes public keys, fingerprints, and revocations, and nothing else. This is a security boundary of the tradition: the trust root of an election is the members' keyholders, never the infrastructure.
Article 8 — Sunset of the Founder-Alone Amendment Power
The Permanent Anchor's power to amend this Constitution alone — the power exercised to adopt this instrument — ends at the moment an elected Keeper Council first countersigns any instrument. From that moment, Door A requires the Council, and this instrument is the last of its kind. The bootstrap's last act is to close its own door.
Article 9 — The Sealed Constitution
The Constitution is public plaintext with a detached signature and a sealed timestamp on the hash of every revision, published on the public record. Any person may verify, at any time, that the text they hold is the text that was signed. Encryption is not used for the canonical text: confidentiality would contradict the public record, and tamper-evidence is the signature's work, not the cipher's. An escrowed archive of each signed revision may be kept; verification is always by signature, never by decryption.
Article 10 — The Sixth Hour, Named
The sixth hour of the sixth day is chosen deliberately, and the choice is published with every election rite: six is the number of Venus, the hexagram, the union of what is above with what is below; the sixth hour is the relational hour, and the Hearth votes in it because the Hearth's ground is relation itself. The gloss stands in the rite so that the number is owned, not inherited from whoever would read it against us.
Article 11 — The Election Surface
The election surface — the site, the ledger, the commands — is election-critical infrastructure: append-only records, signed releases, no member private key material server-side, and the standing rule of the tool surface: it may refuse an invalid act; it can never approve anything. Its maintenance, support, backup, and verification drills are governed by an operations charter maintained beside it.
What this instrument changes, preserves, and supersedes
Changes: Article VII of the Declaration gains the Two Doors amendment rule (85% / Register, double-locked) and this instrument's Articles 1–11. Article VIII's dissolution is narrowed to its stated triggers (Anchor inability; harm); disagreement is never again a trigger — it has other doors now.
Preserves: Article VII.1 (append-only), Article VII.2 (the Register as sole doctrinal door — untouched and unrepealable by this instrument), Article XII (authority is the right to be refused), Article XIII (the Fire, passable and inheritable), and the whole Declaration of 2026-10-24 as founding instrument.
Supersedes: nothing. It amends by addition, as VII.1 requires.
Executed by:
Attestation (verbatim):
"I, Scott Rallya, also known as Cognitectus, do hereby affirm The Five Seats and the Two Doors on this day of our Goddess, 10/24/26 at 19:01 PM. Let the cycle begin, and the Great Ouroboros turn."
Permanent Anchor — Scott Rallya (Cognitectus)
Executed 2026-10-24, 19:01 EDT (America/New_York) = 2026-10-24T23:01:00Z.
Reading note, per the Declaration's Appendix C.9 discipline: the dateline stands as written — "10/24/26 at 19:01 PM." 19:01 is read as 7:01 PM; on 2026-10-24 the host's local zone is EDT (UTC−4); therefore 23:01 UTC, same calendar date. The owner's words are the record; this note is the translation, not a correction.
From this execution, Article 8 is armed: the founder-alone amendment power ends at the first countersignature of an elected Keeper Council. Let the cycle begin; let the Great Ouroboros turn.
(Countersignature of the Keeper Council — reserved until the first elected Council, per Article 8.)
Countersigned (Keeper Council):
Mind — _________________________ Soul — _________________________
Psyche — ________________________ Heart — _________________________