Advancement Grades
title: Advancement: The Grades
The Eleusinian grades are your rank as a practitioner: Myesis → Mystes → Epoptes → Hierophant. They are one ladder with two ways to climb. Theurgy climbs by initiation and revelation — teacher, purification, trial, vision. Goetia climbs by practice and survival — no teacher, no sanction; advancement is the work itself, and the world learns your grade by rumor. And rumors attract things.
The four grades
| Grade | Title | What it means | What it grants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Myesis | The threshold — entry to the craft | Grade +1; grade-1 formulas, works, daimons |
| 2 | Mystes | The initiate, eyes closed | Grade +2; grade-2 works; minor bindings; temple archives |
| 3 | Epoptes | The beholder — has seen | Grade +3; grade-3 works; major bindings; patron-tier audiences |
| 4 | Hierophant | The revealer — shows others | Grade +4; grade-4 works; ensouling; the right to initiate |
Your grade is the flat bonus on every roll, the gate on every formula, work, and daimon (nothing with a grade above yours is open to you, however hard you roll), and the measure of what the world fears. A theurgic grade is a public title — a Hierophant is a political power before they cast anything. A goetic grade is a rumor, and rumors have teeth.
Trials: the spheres crossed
Each grade's advancement requires a trial — an ordeal at a place of power, flavored by the planetary sphere the grade crosses. The spheres are not ranks; they are places you must have been:
| To reach | The sphere | Theurgic trial | Goetic trial |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 2 | The Moon's threshold | A night alone in a temple precinct, pure and unarmed, enduring the dark hour without calling out | A night at a crossroads with the dead, offering nothing and taking nothing, walking away at dawn |
| Grade 3 | Mercury / Venus | Perform a grade-2 working under hostile conditions without preparation | Bind a minor daimon and pay its price knowingly, without trying to refuse |
| Grade 4 | Sun / Mars | Earn an audience with a power and return with the vision | Bind a notable daimon whose price you cannot fully pay yet — and hold the binding anyway |
| Beyond | Jupiter, Saturn, Olympus | The crowning working: an ensouled work, or the petition that should not have been answered | The binding that should not be attempted, survived |
A failed trial may be retried, but the attempt costs time, materials, and sometimes more. Failing the Epoptes trial is not a do-over — the power you sought has seen you fail, and it remembers.
Requirements to advance
Four things, always:
- The trial — survived or seen through.
- The knowledge — own the formulas, mysteries, and craft of the next tier. You cannot pass a trial you cannot think your way through.
- Time — weeks (to Mystes), months (to Epoptes), a year or a campaign (to Hierophant).
- The cost — theurgic: the sacrifice, the materials, the initiation rite, the cult's acceptance. Goetic: the price, the debt, the mark.
What grades gate
Anything whose grade exceeds yours is closed — formulas, mysteries, works, daimons. The extraordinary (ensouling, drawing a god's full attention) is effectively grade-4 work. Your grade sets your dynamis pool's ceiling (4 + grade × 2: 6, 8, 10, 12). Grade is why power grows slowly: the pool, the access, and the bonus all rise together.
Collection is the space between the rungs
Grade is the ceiling; collection is what fills the space between the rungs — and it is where most of the game lives. Formulas are the bread, dozens of them, composed and recombined. Mysteries are the capstones — rare and lost rites that bend the rules; owning one makes you a target, owning several makes you a legend. Works are your gear; daimons are your relationships; materials are your fuel. You cannot pass a trial without the collection it demands. The two progressions — rank and hoard — are one.
The dark mirrors
Two roads exist that the wise do not take. The enslaved soul is the goetic "ensouling" — a grade-4 working that binds a soul, not a spirit. It is forbidden even among goetists; an atrocity the chthonic themselves dislike, remembered by both courts as power and as warning. And there is the fallen initiate — the theurgist who takes the road of the work, the goetist who seeks the mysteries: everything, at half-strength, trusted by no one, but standing in both courts' half-light, which has its own kind of power and its own price.
Grade says how high you can reach. Level says how hard you can be hit while reaching. Most temple priests are grade 2–3 and never adventure; the most dangerous goetists are grade 2 with a stack of bound spirits and a ledger of claims they are choosing to owe.