They were teaching them how to govern themselves. For thousands of years, some of the most influential traditions in human history were not simply teaching people how to acquire power. Ancient Egyptian mystery schools, Greek philosophy, Hermetic teachings, Christian mysticism, Rosicrucian traditions, and the symbolic system of the 33 degrees all point toward a deeper question: what happens when a person learns to master their own consciousness? In 5 Laws of the 33rd Degree, those teachings are distilled into five principles: The Power of Decision.