Seventy-eight incantations come later, spread across twelve categories and two levels. That sounds like a lot of separate skills to learn.
It isn't — underneath all of them there are two forces, and eight things those forces do. Every working in the entire system is one or more of those eight, pointed at something. Learn the eight and the spellbook stops being a list to memorise and becomes a set of combinations.
So they're worth knowing cold, which is exactly the instruction: learn them by memory, through hard study and through reason, because nothing can ever be done without them.1
Two forces sit in the core of the First Point and run out from non-existence into everything.2 One is positive. It's called Additus, and it gives to the universe without holding anything back — an open fountain, pouring out never-ending substance into everything there is. The other is negative. It's called Nihilus, and it takes from the universe relentlessly — a black hole, pulling everything down into a bottom with no limit. Those two images are the whole of it. Something pouring out, something pulling in, both running constantly, both coming from the same core.
The obvious reading is that one of these is good and the other is evil. That reading is blocked immediately: neither force is good or bad, because at this stage of the universe good and evil don't exist yet.3 They're just the two primary activities flowing out of the Source. The moral vocabulary arrives much later, and there's a specific account of when: good and evil turn up once intelligent life starts doing benefit or harm to other intelligent life, and they become the measuring tools for how much we're worth.4
So a destroying force is not a dark force. It's half of how anything happens at all, and you will use it constantly.
Additus splits into four behaviours, four intensities of the same giving, each with a Latin name and a plain meaning.5 Initio is initiate — it causes an event to start, giving motion and momentum to something that wasn't happening. Auctus is augment — it increases the amount or the quality of an event already under way, expanding it, enlarging it, making the situation bigger.
Then it gets stronger. Gemino is multiply — it takes one thing and makes many more of its own kind. Creo is create — it makes a thing where there was nothing at all.
Read down that list and it's a ladder rather than four alternatives. Starting something, growing it, copying it and making it out of nothing are the same act at four strengths.
Nihilus splits the same way.6 Retineo is discontinue — it stops the current flow of events around a thing, halting whatever is presently going on in someone. Deminuo is diminish — it slows that flow instead of stopping it, reducing the amount or the quality of a thing.
Then the harder two. Dispertior is divide — it breaks one thing into lesser forms, taking a unit and dismantling it into pieces that hold together less well. Everto is destroy — it destroys a thing outright, and it also keeps an event from happening at all.
That last pairing is worth holding onto. Destroying something and preventing something are the same behaviour here, which means stopping a thing before it starts is filed as an act of destruction rather than an act of protection.
Two examples arrive together, and side by side they do more work than either does alone. A serious illness cannot be removed without the reducing negative force of Nihilus, which is what eradicates the infirmity. And an incantation would never manifest at all if not for the positive force of Additus.7
Sit with the first one. Healing is filed under the destroying force. Not under giving, not under restoring, not under strengthening — under the force whose four behaviours are stop, shrink, break apart and destroy. Because the thing you're actually doing to a sick person is subtraction: there's something present that needs to not be present.
And the second example says the reverse about the spell itself. Casting anything at all requires the giving force, because the incantation has to be brought into being before it can subtract anything.
Which means a healing spell runs both forces at once, in opposite directions. Additus to make the working exist. Nihilus to take the illness out. That's the shape of most operations in this system, and it's why neither force can be the evil one — you'd be using evil every time you helped somebody.
The drill is deliberately small, and you can do the first half in the next two minutes. Start one at a time, with your eyes shut: take each of the eight behaviours separately and watch how it moves in the universe. Just Initio. Then just Auctus. Eight sittings, not one.8
Then take it into ordinary actions, and the worked example is a person drinking water.9 Watch what's actually happening. Receiving the liquid into your body is Additus — something given, taken in, added. But getting the water out of the tap or the bottle first is Nihilus, because something was removed from where it was. One swallow, both forces, running at the same time in opposite directions.
Now do it with everything else. Someone leaves a room. A meal gets cooked. A message gets sent. Keep going, and the promise attached is that your mind fills up with realizations about the universe, the levels of reality, and how magic works.10 No count, no duration, no stopping condition — just as much as you can manage.
These two are named the Universal Potentials, and the claim on them is total: they govern every aspect of magic, from the subtlest to the most obvious, and nothing can ever be done without them.11 That's why they sit this early in the curriculum, before any spell, any weapon, any correspondence table. The eight behaviours are the verbs the rest of the system conjugates. When a later incantation restores vitality after surgery, that's Additus at the Initio and Auctus end. When one dissolves a spiritual tether, that's Nihilus at Retineo. When one multiplies livestock, that's Gemino, plainly.
And they're needed in both forms — present in the working itself, or held in mental focus.12 Either way they're not optional equipment. They're what the working is made of.
The two forces and their eight behaviours are given as received doctrine incorporated into incantations "since the beginning of magical theories," with no tradition named and nothing quoted.13 This is the Eldest Tradition warrant on the source stub. 🚩 SINGLE SOURCE · 🚩 SECONDARY WITHOUT PRIMARY.
The two behaviour tables are printed as figures and the conversion of this edition merges the final two Additus entries into one block. Gemino and Creo are recoverable from the effect text — multiply into many more forms of the original type, and create from where there was naught — but the table itself is damaged. ⚠ Re-check the plate before quoting a pairing.
Unresolved in the material: the eight behaviours are described as four intensities of each force, which suggests a scale, and also as four distinct behaviours, which suggests a menu.14 Whether Creo is stronger than Initio or just different from it changes how a practitioner would choose between them, and no ranking is given.
Follow the ladder reading and the four behaviours are degrees of one thing. Initiate, augment, multiply, create — each needs more force than the last, and picking one is picking how hard to push. A practitioner working that way is calibrating: what's the smallest behaviour that does this job?
Follow the menu reading and they're four different tools. Creating something from nothing isn't a stronger version of starting something that was already possible; it's a different operation with a different target. A practitioner working that way is diagnosing: what kind of act does this situation need?
Both are supported. "Four magical behaviors each… corresponding to intensities of both of these two universal forces" says ladder. The four distinct effect-descriptions say menu. Whichever you're in decides whether an operation that failed should be retried harder or retried differently.
Hehu and Hehut — Expansion-Contraction, Breath, Heat — Both traditions put a two-sided force at the root of everything and make it the engine that gets creation moving. The Kemetic pair is Hehu and Hehut, expansion and contraction, and their job is to take the still, formless black substance and wake it up — by breathing into it, expanding and contracting, giving it heat.
But the two pairs are shaped for different work, and you can see it in what each one is made of. Hehu and Hehut are a rhythm. Expansion and contraction alternate, the way breathing does, and the he root ties them to heat and to endless time — so the pair is a continuous oscillation you could join.
Additus and Nihilus are not a rhythm. They run simultaneously rather than alternately — one swallow of water uses both at once — and each splits into four named, discrete operations with distinct effects. That's not a breath. It's a toolkit.
Where a tradition's root polarity is a rhythm, its beginner practice is entrainment — breathe with it, match it, join the oscillation. Where the root polarity is a toolkit, the beginner practice is identification — learn the eight names, then spot which one is running in a glass of water. Neither corpus can show you that, because each only carries its own answer. Put together, they explain why one tradition's first exercise is breathing and the other's is watching yourself drink.
Sharpest implication. The destroying force is not the dark half of this system, and healing is the proof. A cure is filed under Nihilus, because taking an illness out of someone is subtraction — and a spell that heals is running both forces at once in opposite directions, giving to make the working exist and taking to clear the disease.
Generative questions.