Files
kennethreitz ce93f429a2 Add Knowledge: the vault's reference shelf, crosslinked across the site
Publish the Obsidian vault's Knowledge folder as /knowledge (881 notes,
67 folders), with a Knowledge item in the nav and footer.

- scripts/import_knowledge.py regenerates data/knowledge from the vault:
  slugged paths, folder notes as index pages, wikilinks resolved to site
  links (or plain text), callouts, highlights, and Dataview tables
  rendered statically. Personal notes are withheld via an exclusion
  list plus a privacy guard.
- tuftecms/core/knowledge.py builds a concept index from note titles and
  aliases. First mentions on ordinary pages link to their Knowledge note
  (capped, never in headings, code, links, or sidenotes); Knowledge pages
  list related notes and where they're mentioned across the site; other
  pages get a Related Knowledge block.
- Knowledge URLs join sitemap.xml (so the sweep test covers them), never
  displace existing legacy slugs, list alphabetically, and mermaid
  diagrams render client-side only on pages that have them.
2026-10-18 20:08:46 -04:00

4.6 KiB

description, source
description source
Every vice is a virtue that forgot what it was for. obsidian-knowledge

Virtues & Vices

Every vice is a virtue that forgot what it was for.


This domain maps the old moral psychology of the West — the seven deadly sins and the virtues that answer them — not as a courtroom but as a diagnostic manual. The desert monks who first catalogued the sins were not compiling a list of crimes; they were describing the recurring thoughts that colonize a mind, the disordered desires underneath behavior. Read that way, the tradition is shadow work a millennium and a half before Jung gave it a name: what we refuse to look at in ourselves does not disappear, it runs us — which is precisely what The Shadow describes, and precisely what the monks meant.

The lineage runs from Evagrius Ponticus's eight logismoi in the Egyptian desert, through Gregory the Great's consolidation into seven, to Dante's Purgatorio, which arranges the whole mountain as a therapy of love — every sin a love that is perverted, deficient, or excessive. The remedial virtues are the counter-practices; the cardinal and theological virtues frame the larger architecture the sins deform.

The vault tie-in that makes this more than a history lesson: the Enneagram's nine passions are the seven deadly sins plus two. Each type carries one of the old sins as its core passion, with fear (Type 6) and deceit (Type 3) rounding out the nine. The Christian moral tradition — see Christianity and Catholic Saints & Figures — and a modern typology turn out to be reading the same map.


The Master Table

Sin Enneagram Passion Remedial Virtue
Pride Type 2 Humility
Envy Type 4 Kindness
Wrath Type 1 Patience
Sloth Type 9 Diligence
Greed Type 5 Charity
Gluttony Type 7 Temperance
Lust Type 8 Chastity

Each sin is answered by the virtue trained to hold against it:

flowchart LR
    P["Pride"] -->|"remedied by"| Hu["Humility"]
    E["Envy"] -->|"remedied by"| K["Kindness"]
    W["Wrath"] -->|"remedied by"| Pa["Patience"]
    S["Sloth"] -->|"remedied by"| D["Diligence"]
    G["Greed"] -->|"remedied by"| C["Charity"]
    Gl["Gluttony"] -->|"remedied by"| T["Temperance"]
    L["Lust"] -->|"remedied by"| Ch["Chastity"]

Two passions fall outside the seven: fear belongs to Type 6 and deceit to Type 3 — the Enneagram's additions to the desert's catalogue.


The Folders

Seven Deadly Sins — the seven, each traced from Evagrius through Gregory to Dante's mountain, with its remedy and its Enneagram passion.

Virtues — the seven heavenly remedies, the four cardinal virtues of Plato and Aquinas, and the three theological virtues of 1 Corinthians 13.



The sins are not what we did. They are what we wanted, bent out of shape.