Grammar of Meaning
Tamara Sanderson · an open, bottom-up study of how meaning gets made

Grammar of
Meaning

How meaning gets made.

Meaning isn't found — it's made, in the meeting between a person and the world. An open study of how religion, philosophy, and psychology make it, reading each tradition in its own vocabulary to ask which moves underneath the answers recur as a rhyme across traditions.

Start here — what this is →
The Library the world's traditions, gathered The Essays meaning-making in public The Garden a pilgrimage you walk The Method the open method behind it all
✦From the essays
What's Worth Wanting · July 1, 2026The Length of a RoadFrancis of Assisi gave away everything he owned. What he was really giving up was distance.What's Worth Wanting · June 19, 2026The Woman Who Set Fire to HeavenBurning away the reward and the threat. What remains is what you actually love.

Browse all essays →

01State of the library

A live snapshot from the corpus — what's been gathered so far, and how it's distributed across families. The skew is real and named, not hidden.

State of the library
A snapshot from the corpus · as of July 1, 2026
545
traditions
9
families
347K
sources gathered
9.8M
quotable passages
4,745
archives catalogued
The corpus by family — click any family to see its traditions
Abrahamic 55%Dharmic 8%
Abrahamic· 191,738 (55%)83 sub-traditions ▸
Christianity83,183
Judaism30,172
Islam16,184
ABR6,449
Protestant Christianity5,932
Catholic Christianity5,118
Black Church / African-American Christianity3,148
Sufi Islam2,445
Sunni Islam2,044
Pentecostal Christianity1,811
Baháʼí Faith1,674
Protestant / Quaker (Society of Friends) Christianity1,658
+71 more · browse all →
Dharmic· 28,247 (8%)19 sub-traditions ▸
Buddhism (Dharmic)9,383
Hinduism (Dharmic)4,429
Zen Buddhism2,880
Sikhism (Dharmic)2,570
Advaita Vedanta Hinduism1,666
Yoga Hinduism1,264
Theravada Buddhism1,026
Vajrayana Buddhism981
Mahayana Buddhism654
Tibetan Buddhism631
Tantra Hinduism523
Jainism (Dharmic)516
+7 more · browse all →
Philosophical· 26,193 (8%)5 sub-traditions ▸
Philosophical (umbrella)21,538
Existentialism (Philosophical)2,895
Stoicism (modern philosophical) (Philosophical)1,281
Theistic existentialism Existentialism373
Atheistic existentialism Existentialism106
Psychological· 22,152 (6%)62 sub-traditions ▸
PSY2,702
Psychodynamic (Psychological)2,132
Jungian / analytical psychology (Psychological)1,571
Internal Family Systems (Psychological)1,443
Drive theory / Psychodynamic (Psychological)1,084
PSY-DEV747
PSY-OBJ710
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Psychological)576
PSY-EXT488
Attachment theory (Psychological)452
Humanistic psychology (Psychological)428
PSY-INT411
+50 more · browse all →
Modern Spiritual· 12,934 (4%)69 sub-traditions ▸
Integral (Modern / Hybrid)2,995
MOD1,434
Integral Integrative spiritual formation594
MOD-ECO460
MOD-NTH452
MOD-CRS428
MOD-ALE412
MOD-NTH-CS400
MOD-THE361
MOD-CON329
MOD-ANA303
MOD-WIC299
+57 more · browse all →
Indigenous & traditional· 12,688 (4%)38 sub-traditions ▸
IND2,096
AFR1,283
IND-MES578
IND-AFR-YOR459
AFR-DIA-VOD458
IND-NAM426
IND-SHA411
Aboriginal Australian (Indigenous / First Nations)406
IND-KOR394
Amazonian Indigenous (Indigenous / First Nations)383
IND-AFR352
IND-NAC345
+26 more · browse all →
East Asian· 10,432 (3%)38 sub-traditions ▸
Taoism / Daoism (East Asian)3,711
Confucianism (East Asian)2,926
EAS1,150
Shintō (East Asian)446
EAS-KYO366
EAS-CHA339
EAS-CHN282
EAS-JPN220
EAS-KOR-000190
EAS-TIA184
EAS-HUA136
EAS-VIE124
+26 more · browse all →
Ancient· 9,005 (3%)19 sub-traditions ▸
Gnosticism (Ancient / Classical)1,714
Stoicism (Ancient / Classical)1,331
ANC983
Ancient Mystery religions (Ancient / Classical)910
Neoplatonism (Ancient / Classical)829
Hermeticism (Ancient / Classical)667
ANC-GRK450
Plotinian Neoplatonism411
ANC-ALC357
ANC-EGY260
Platonism (Ancient / Classical)246
ANC-CEL213
+7 more · browse all →
Secular· 6,535 (2%)19 sub-traditions ▸
SEC-RST1,704
SEC1,185
Secular Humanism (Secular)774
SEC-12S370
SEC-MBS308
SEC-MIN-000266
SEC-12S-ALT264
SEC-12S-AA236
Sunday Assembly / Secular community (Secular)205
SEC-MBC202
SEC-STO192
SEC-MIN-MBS164
+7 more · browse all →
Pending review· 21,211 (6%)5 sub-traditions ▸
META-CANON13,831
META-ARC6,855
META-GUT-AUTHOR281
MEDIA-POD191
META-REVIEW53
Other / uncategorized· 6,222 (2%)27 sub-traditions ▸
OOS3,083
Project root / cross-family (umbrella)1,713
PAC-POL579
GEN-REC346
PAC127
GEN-REC-IND89
GEN-REC-NEO51
ACA-SOC25
GEN-REC-DZOGCHEN22
GEN-REC-NRM20
INT-DIA20
ACA-COMP19
+15 more · browse all →
The corpus skews toward Christianity and the Abrahamic traditions — a real bias from centuries of uneven text-production and digitization. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and 540+ other traditions are all included; we document the skew rather than hide it. ("Pending review" = 21,211 rows from the academic-metadata harvest, flagged for a human pass and kept visible — per our CARE discipline we tag rather than force-sort or hide them; "Other / uncategorized" = the small remaining residual.)
Coding is the current frontier. · Browse all 545 traditions →
02Reference
Referencelookup docs we use a lot
Glossarythe site's working vocabulary — every term as we use it publicly Principleshow we work — the visual language, the writing voice, how we present traditions, and CARE Scholarswhose work we build on — by where their contribution sits in the project (a living list) Bibliographythe scholarly editions the work builds on