Rhonda Byrne: Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices

Who Rhonda Byrne is, what The Secret book and movie claim about the law of attraction, the gratitude and visualization practices she teaches, the criticism the work has drawn, and how her framing differs from Neville Goddard and Esther Hicks.

Who is Rhonda Byrne and what is she known for?

Rhonda Byrne is an Australian television producer and author, born in Melbourne on 12 March 1951, who created the 2006 documentary The Secret and the book that followed it. Before that she worked in Australian television production. She was not a spiritual teacher by background, and this matters: she approached the law of attraction as a producer packaging existing teachers rather than as someone presenting an original revelation. The Secret movie was released online in March 2006 and the book later the same year. Two episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show in early 2007 turned both into a global phenomenon, and the book went to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. TIME magazine included Byrne in its 2007 list of the hundred most influential people. She has published a series of follow-ups: The Power in 2010, The Magic in 2012, Hero in 2013, How The Secret Changed My Life in 2016, and The Greatest Secret in 2020. Unusually for a figure of her reach, Byrne gives few interviews, runs no live seminar circuit, and is far less publicly visible than most of the teachers she featured.

The production background explains the shape of the work. The Secret movie is built like commercial television, with short interview segments cut against dramatized historical scenes, music cues, and a narrative promising withheld knowledge now revealed. That structure is why it traveled: it made an old body of New Thought writing legible to people who would never pick up a 1910 self-help pamphlet. It is also why the material is thin where a book by a working teacher would be thick, since a film assembled from soundbites cannot handle qualification well.

What did Rhonda Byrne do before The Secret?

Rhonda Byrne worked in Australian broadcasting, beginning in radio and moving into television production, and in 1994 co-founded Prime Time Productions in Melbourne. Her credits from that period include the long-running series The World's Greatest Commercials and the documentary Oz Encounters: UFOs in Australia. None of it was spiritual or self-help programming, and she had no training in psychology, physics, or religious studies.

Is Rhonda Byrne still writing and publishing?

Rhonda Byrne has continued to publish, most recently with The Greatest Secret in 2020, which marks a clear change of direction toward teaching about awareness. She remains reclusive by the standards of the self-help industry, with no regular touring schedule and few sit-down interviews since the publicity peak around 2007.

How did Rhonda Byrne come to create The Secret?

Rhonda Byrne began work on The Secret in 2004, during a period she has described as a personal low point after the death of her father, when her daughter Hayley gave her a copy of The Science of Getting Rich, a 1910 book by the New Thought author Wallace D. Wattles. Wattles argues that a person who holds a clear mental image of what they want, with faith and gratitude, and who then acts in a particular way on the opportunities in front of them, will draw material results toward themselves. Byrne then went looking for the same claim in other early twentieth century writers. She then did what a television producer would do: rather than write her own treatise, she filmed people teaching versions of that idea in the present day. The result was a documentary assembled from interviews with figures including Bob Proctor, Jack Canfield, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Lisa Nichols, Joe Vitale, John Assaraf, Marci Shimoff, and, in the original release, Esther Hicks. Paul Harrington produced alongside Byrne and Drew Heriot directed. The film went out over the internet in March 2006, an early example of direct online distribution for a documentary.

The origin story is worth taking seriously as a piece of construction. Byrne framed the material as a secret: knowledge held by a handful of historical figures, deliberately suppressed, now released. That framing is a marketing decision, and it is the weakest part of the presentation, because the ideas in The Secret book were not hidden. They circulated openly in cheap mass-market books throughout the early twentieth century and were sold by mail order to hundreds of thousands of readers. Wattles, Charles Haanel, Prentice Mulford, and Robert Collier were popular authors, not initiates guarding a mystery. Byrne's contribution was not discovery. It was compression, a four-word procedure, and a distribution strategy that reached an audience the earlier writers never could.

Who directed The Secret movie?

Drew Heriot directed The Secret movie, with Rhonda Byrne and Paul Harrington producing through Prime Time Productions. Heriot later brought a legal claim against Byrne and her companies asserting co-authorship of the film and a share of its revenue, which Byrne disputed.

Why is it called The Secret if the ideas were already published?

The title reflects Rhonda Byrne's framing that a small number of historical figures understood the law of attraction and that the knowledge was withheld from ordinary people. The claim does not hold up historically. The books Byrne drew on, including Wallace Wattles's The Science of Getting Rich, were mass-market publications sold openly.

What does the secret law of attraction actually claim?

The secret law of attraction, as Rhonda Byrne presents it, is the claim that thoughts have a frequency, that like attracts like, and that whatever a person holds in mind with sustained feeling will be drawn into their life as a matching circumstance. The mechanism is emotional as much as mental: the feeling attached to a thought determines what it attracts, so wanting something from a place of lack is said to attract more lack, while feeling as though you already have it is said to attract the thing itself. Byrne describes the process as impersonal and always operating, like gravity, working equally for what a person wants and what they fear. She writes that the universe does not register negations, so dwelling on avoiding debt is treated as thinking about debt. Byrne adds that the law works whether or not you know about it, and that timing and scale reflect only how firmly a person believes. These are presented as descriptions of how reality works rather than as a psychological strategy, and that is the point on which almost all serious criticism turns.

It helps to separate two things The Secret book runs together. One is a claim about attention and behavior, uncontroversial in mild form: what you habitually think about shapes what you notice, what you attempt, and how other people respond to you. The other is a claim about physical causation, that mental states emit something that arranges external events. The first is ordinary and defensible. The second is the distinctive claim, and it has no supporting evidence. A reader can hold the first claim and use the practices productively while declining the second, and in practice many readers do exactly that, treating the material as a discipline of attention.

What does The Secret mean by frequency and vibration?

In The Secret book, Rhonda Byrne uses frequency and vibration to describe the emotional quality of a thought, arguing that thoughts are broadcast like a signal and attract circumstances tuned to the same register. The terms are borrowed from physics and radio but are not used in their technical sense, and physicists who have discussed the film have said the analogy corresponds to nothing in the science.

Does The Secret say action is unnecessary?

No, though the emphasis has led many readers to think so. The Secret book includes action within its receiving stage and describes inspired action, meaning action that arises easily once a person has settled into the feeling of already having what they want. What the book de-emphasizes is effortful, grinding work, which it treats as a sign of misaligned belief.

What is inside The Secret book and how is it organized?

The Secret book is organized around a three-stage procedure Rhonda Byrne calls the Creative Process, summarized as ask, believe, receive. Asking means stating clearly what you want, once, with specificity. Believing means acting and feeling as though it is already yours, which Byrne treats as the load-bearing stage and the one most people fail. Receiving means holding the feeling of having it, staying alert to opportunities, and following the actions that then feel natural. Around this spine the book adds supporting practices. Gratitude is presented as the fastest way to change your emotional register, both as a general orientation and as a daily exercise. Visualization is taught as picturing the end result rather than the process, in short vivid sessions rather than long ones. Byrne also introduces what she calls Secret Shifters, small deliberate acts that pull mood upward quickly, such as music, memories, or being outdoors. The remaining chapters apply the framework to money, relationships, health, the world, and the self. The tone throughout is declarative and repetitive, with contributor quotes carrying much of the argument, which makes the book quick to read and easy to remember but light on caveats.

Read structurally, The Secret book is a mood management manual with a metaphysical explanation attached. Almost every instruction in it is about noticing your emotional state and changing it deliberately, which is useful advice most readers can act on the same day. The cost of that trade shows up in the chapters on health and on world events, where the same logic implies that sick people and people caught in disasters are participating in what happens to them. Byrne does not soften this, and the health chapter has drawn sustained criticism. A reader who wants the practical value can work through the gratitude, visualization, and mood-shifting material and skip the causal explanation, which the practices do not depend on.

What is the Creative Process in The Secret?

The Creative Process is Rhonda Byrne's three-stage method in The Secret book: ask, believe, receive. Ask means specifying what you want clearly rather than repeating a vague wish. Believe means behaving and feeling as though the outcome is already settled, which Byrne treats as the stage that determines the result. Receive means holding that feeling and acting on the opportunities that arise.

What are Secret Shifters?

Secret Shifters is Rhonda Byrne's term in The Secret book for small deliberate actions that raise your emotional state quickly when you notice it has dropped. Examples she offers include playing music you love, recalling a good memory, being in nature, or stroking a pet. You build the list in advance, so that when you catch yourself in a bad state you have something ready.

What Rhonda Byrne practice can a reader try this week?

The most testable Rhonda Byrne practice is the gratitude program from The Magic, her 2012 book, which sets out twenty-eight consecutive daily exercises. You can run a compressed version in seven days without buying anything, and it is the part of her work that overlaps most with what psychology has actually studied. Day one: write out a list of specific things in your life you are grateful for, and after each one write a short sentence saying why. Specificity matters more than length. Day two: choose a small stone and keep it by your bed. Before sleep, hold it and bring to mind the single best thing that happened that day. This is Byrne's version of a story Lee Brower told in The Secret movie about a gratitude rock. Day three: apply the same listing to your health, naming parts of your body that work and thanking them by name. Day four: do it for money, including money you have already received and spent. Day five: do it for one person, in detail, and then tell them. Day six: write out one thing you want as though it has already happened, in the past tense, and thank it. Day seven: reread the week and note what changed.

Run this as an experiment rather than an article of faith, and keep an honest record. Before you start, write down two or three things you actually want to see change, plus a one-line note on your baseline mood. At the end of the week, reread it. The gratitude research would predict a modest lift in mood and sleep quality and a change in what you notice, not a change in external events, and that is a useful prediction to test against your own experience. Two practical notes. Rote listing stops working quickly, so vary the targets and force yourself into specifics. And keep the writing physical if you can, since the slowness of handwriting appears to matter for this kind of exercise. If after a week nothing has shifted, that is a real result and worth recording.

How do you do the magic rock practice from Rhonda Byrne's book?

The magic rock practice from Rhonda Byrne's The Magic asks you to pick a small stone, keep it on your bedside table, and hold it each night before sleep while you recall the best thing that happened that day and say thank you. The stone has no claimed properties of its own; it works as a physical cue that makes the habit hard to forget.

How does Rhonda Byrne say you should visualize?

Rhonda Byrne teaches visualizing the end result rather than the process, briefly and vividly rather than at length. In The Secret book the instruction is to picture yourself already in possession of what you want, filling in sensory detail and generating the feeling you expect to have then. A vision board is the same idea in physical form, used as a daily reminder rather than a session.

What do Rhonda Byrne's later books teach?

Rhonda Byrne's later books each isolate one element of The Secret and build a whole volume on it. The Power, published in 2010, argues that love is the operative force behind the law of attraction and that what a person loves and gives attention to is what they receive, recasting the earlier framework in emotional rather than mechanical language. The Magic, published in 2012, is the most practical, structured as twenty-eight dated daily exercises in gratitude, and is a workbook rather than an argument. Hero, published in 2013, applies the framework to work and calling, drawing on interviews with people describing how their careers developed. How The Secret Changed My Life, published in 2016, collects reader accounts submitted to Byrne's organization. The Greatest Secret, published in 2020, is the sharpest break. Rather than teaching how to get what you want, it turns toward the question of who is doing the wanting, arguing that a person's real nature is awareness itself rather than the thoughts and identity passing through it, and quoting contemporary nondual and contemplative teachers including Eckhart Tolle and the late Jesuit writer Anthony de Mello. Readers who came for manifestation frequently find it disorienting.

The arc across these Rhonda Byrne books is unusual for a bestselling author in this field. The Secret promises control over circumstances. The Greatest Secret, fourteen years later, relocates the payoff, arguing that the peace people were chasing through outcomes was available directly and did not require the outcomes at all. Byrne has said she kept searching after The Secret, and the later book reads like the result of that searching rather than a franchise extension. It also produces a tension she does not fully address. If the underlying self is awareness and desires belong to a passing identity, the urgency of the earlier method is undercut, and the two books are not easy to hold at once. Readers tend to resolve this by picking one. Approaching the catalog fresh, The Magic is the most usable and The Secret is the necessary context.

What is the difference between The Secret and The Greatest Secret?

The Secret, published in 2006, teaches a method for attracting circumstances you want through thought and feeling. The Greatest Secret, published in 2020, argues that a person's true nature is awareness rather than the thinking self, and points readers toward recognizing that directly rather than toward getting outcomes. The second book draws on nondual and contemplative teachers rather than New Thought authors.

Which Rhonda Byrne book is the most practical?

The Magic, published in 2012, is the most practical of Rhonda Byrne's books because it is built as a twenty-eight day sequence of dated exercises rather than as an argument. Each day gives a specific gratitude task with clear instructions, which removes the main problem readers have with The Secret book, namely knowing what to actually do on a Tuesday morning.

Where did Rhonda Byrne's ideas come from?

Rhonda Byrne's ideas come almost entirely from New Thought, an American religious and self-help movement that took shape in the late nineteenth century and produced a large body of popular writing about mind and prosperity. The direct trigger was Wallace D. Wattles's The Science of Getting Rich from 1910, and the same claims appear in Charles Haanel's The Master Key System, in Prentice Mulford's essays, in Robert Collier's writing, and in Genevieve Behrend's presentation of Thomas Troward's lectures. Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich from 1937 belongs to the same current and reached a far larger audience than any of them. New Thought itself drew on earlier sources, including Phineas Quimby's mental healing practice in New England and strands of American Protestant optimism. What Byrne added was not doctrine. It was a modern cast of living teachers, a film format, and a single memorable formula. Many of the teachers she interviewed were already carrying that lineage forward, Bob Proctor most explicitly, since his own work descended directly from Think and Grow Rich. The historical figures Byrne credits with knowing the secret are the weakest part of the sourcing, since the evidence connecting them to the doctrine is thin.

Byrne's influence runs the other way too, and it is larger than her critics usually allow. The vocabulary of contemporary manifestation culture, including the phrase law of attraction itself as a mass-market term, spread through the door The Secret opened in 2006 and 2007. Much of what circulates now on social media as manifesting technique is downstream of that moment even when the people using it have never read the book. Teachers whose reach had been modest before appearing in The Secret movie found themselves with international audiences afterward. Byrne matters historically regardless of what one thinks of the claims: she did not originate the ideas, but she is the reason a hundred-year-old American doctrine became a default assumption in popular culture.

Who was Wallace Wattles and why does he matter to The Secret?

Wallace D. Wattles was an American New Thought writer whose 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich argues that holding a clear mental image with faith and gratitude, while acting efficiently on present opportunities, produces wealth. Rhonda Byrne has said that reading it in 2004 set The Secret in motion. Wattles supplies the skeleton of the framework, including the emphasis on gratitude and on picturing the finished result.

Which teachers appeared in The Secret movie?

The Secret movie was assembled from interviews with a large group of self-help and New Thought teachers, with a smaller number appearing in the extended edition. Recurring figures include Bob Proctor, Jack Canfield, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Lisa Nichols, Joe Vitale, John Assaraf, Marci Shimoff, and Denis Waitley. Esther Hicks appeared in the original release but not the extended version.

What criticism has The Secret faced?

The Secret has drawn sustained criticism on four fronts. The first is scientific: the law of attraction has no empirical support, and the book's use of quantum physics and frequency language does not correspond to how those terms function in physics. Skeptical Inquirer and similar publications have said the central claims have no basis in scientific reality. The second is the victim-blaming problem, and it is the most serious. If circumstances follow from thought, then illness, poverty, abuse, and disaster become in some measure the responsibility of the people they happen to. Byrne builds in no exception, and the book contains passages applying the logic to sickness and to large-scale tragedy. Barbara Ehrenreich made this the center of her 2009 book Bright-Sided, drawing on her own experience of being urged toward positivity while treated for breast cancer, and arguing that a doctrine of this kind leaves no legitimate space for grief or anger. The third is the health framing, where treating illness as thought-caused risks discouraging people from acting on symptoms. The fourth is the historical claim of a suppressed secret, which does not survive contact with the publishing record of New Thought.

A fifth strand is structural rather than doctrinal. Because The Secret locates the cause of a person's circumstances inside their own head, it has nothing to say about the conditions people are born into, and it can function as an argument that those conditions are self-selected. Sociologists of religion have made this point about prosperity teaching generally, and it applies here. The defense usually offered is that the book addresses individuals who do have room to act and is not intended as social analysis, which is fair as far as it goes but does not address the fact that the book states its claims as universal laws. It is worth being precise about what is being alleged. The criticism is of the content of the teaching and its predictable effects on readers, not of Byrne's sincerity, which nobody has seriously contested.

What happened with James Arthur Ray after The Secret?

James Arthur Ray, one of the teachers featured in The Secret movie, saw his profile rise sharply after the film. In October 2009 three participants died following a sweat lodge ceremony he led at a retreat near Sedona, Arizona, and in 2011 he was convicted of three counts of negligent homicide and served a prison sentence. Rhonda Byrne had no connection to that event and no involvement in Ray's retreat business.

What lawsuits were filed over The Secret?

Two disputes over The Secret became public cases in United States federal courts. Drew Heriot, who directed The Secret movie, claimed co-authorship of the film and a share of its revenue. Dan Hollings, an internet marketing consultant who worked on the launch, claimed he was owed a percentage of gross margins under an informal arrangement. Rhonda Byrne and her companies disputed both claims. No widely reported court judgment declared Heriot a co-author.

How do Rhonda Byrne's teachings differ from Neville Goddard's?

Rhonda Byrne and Neville Goddard both teach that inner states produce outer results, but they locate the mechanism differently and demand different things of a reader. Goddard, the Barbadian-born lecturer who taught in the United States from the 1930s until his death in 1972, taught the law of assumption: that imagination is the actual creative power, that a person should assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and persist in it until it hardens into fact, and, in his later work, that God and human imagination are the same thing. His method is narrower and more demanding than Byrne's. Goddard asks for a specific imaginal scene, usually a short one implying the wish is already accomplished, entered in a drowsy state at night and repeated until it feels natural, and he adds revision, the practice of mentally replaying the day as you would have preferred it. Byrne's Creative Process is looser, more emotional, and more concerned with general mood, gratitude, and staying in a good state across the day. Goddard almost never talks about vibration or frequency, and he grounds his teaching in scripture read as psychological allegory rather than in borrowed physics.

Set against Esther Hicks and the Abraham material, the nearest living comparison, Byrne again reads as the simplified version. Hicks presents an emotional guidance scale, a graded model of feeling states used to move upward incrementally rather than jumping straight to joy, and emphasizes alignment before action. That gives a reader something to do when they feel terrible, which is exactly where The Secret book is least helpful, since its instruction amounts to feeling better. Louise Hay, another adjacent figure, is narrower and more clinical in tone, focused on self-worth, mirror work, and affirmations aimed at specific beliefs. Byrne's distinctive contribution across this group is reach rather than depth. Anyone who finds The Secret compelling but underspecified will usually get further with Goddard for technique or Hicks for handling difficult emotional states.

Is the law of assumption the same as the law of attraction?

No. The law of attraction, as Rhonda Byrne teaches it in The Secret book, says that thoughts carrying a particular feeling attract matching circumstances from outside. Neville Goddard's law of assumption says that assuming the feeling of the wish already fulfilled, and persisting in it, causes the outer world to conform. The practical difference is that Goddard asks you to occupy the end state as if present, while Byrne asks you to want something while feeling good.

How does Rhonda Byrne differ from Napoleon Hill?

Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, shares the premise that thought precedes wealth but is far more practical about the intervening steps, insisting on a definite written aim, a deadline, specialized knowledge, persistence, and a mastermind group of collaborators. Rhonda Byrne's The Secret book compresses that structure into feeling and belief, and treats effortful work with suspicion where Hill treats it as essential. Readers who find The Secret too vague on execution often get more from Hill.

Who should not rely on The Secret, and what are its limits?

The Secret is a poor fit for anyone in a situation where the framework's implied blame would land on them. That includes people with serious illness, people in acute grief, people living with depression or anxiety, and people whose circumstances are shaped by conditions outside their control, since the book's logic quietly implies that their state reflects their thinking. Rhonda Byrne's material offers no way to distinguish between what a person can influence and what they cannot, and that missing distinction is where most of the harm reported by readers occurs. Nor does it work as a plan. The book gives no guidance on skills, on money, on timing, or on what to do when an attempt fails, and treating persistent effort as a symptom of doubt can leave a reader passive exactly where action would help. There is also a specific failure mode worth naming: monitoring your own thoughts for negativity, which The Secret encourages, can turn compulsive, so that ordinary worry becomes something to fear. Used more modestly, as a discipline of attention and gratitude, it costs little, and some readers find it genuinely steadying.

The honest summary is that the practices are more defensible than the theory. Gratitude journaling, deliberately shifting your mood with a prepared list of interventions, picturing a finished outcome before starting work, and noticing where your attention habitually goes are all reasonable things to do, and none require believing that thought emits a signal. Strip the causal claim away and what remains is an unremarkable but workable set of habits, presented with unusual clarity and force. Keep the causal claim and you inherit the victim-blaming problem, the medical risk, and a standing excuse for inaction. Byrne's books do not offer that separation, so a reader has to make it themselves.

Can The Secret be harmful?

The Secret can be harmful in specific circumstances, and the risk is concentrated in three areas. Someone with symptoms who treats illness as a thought problem may delay medical care. Someone with depression may read the book as confirmation that their condition is their own doing. And someone in a genuinely constrained situation may take the framework as evidence that they chose it. Rhonda Byrne's books include no warnings on these points, so a reader has to supply the judgment themselves.

Does anything in The Secret have research support?

The gratitude practices do, in a limited and different sense than the book claims. Gratitude journaling has been studied in psychology and is associated in a number of studies with modest improvements in mood, sleep, and life satisfaction. That research concerns how a person feels and functions, not whether thought attracts external events, and it offers no support for the secret law of attraction as a causal claim about reality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the law of attraction in The Secret supported by science?

No. The law of attraction as described in The Secret book has no accepted scientific support. Skeptical Inquirer and similar publications have said the film's central claims have no basis in scientific reality, and the book's appeals to quantum physics are not how physicists use those ideas. Rhonda Byrne presents the law on the authority of the teachers she assembled and the older New Thought writers she drew on, not as a tested hypothesis.

Did the movie or the book of The Secret come first?

The Secret movie came first. Rhonda Byrne produced the documentary through her Melbourne company Prime Time Productions and released it online in March 2006, with an extended edition following that October. The book was published later in 2006 and reworks the film's interview material into written form. Both reached mass audiences after two episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show featured the material in early 2007, after which the book topped the New York Times bestseller list.

What book inspired Rhonda Byrne to create The Secret?

Rhonda Byrne has said the trigger was The Science of Getting Rich, a 1910 book by the New Thought writer Wallace D. Wattles, which her daughter Hayley gave her during a hard period after the death of Byrne's father in 2004. Wattles argues that thought held in a particular way, combined with acting on the opportunities in front of you, produces material results.

Why was Esther Hicks removed from The Secret movie?

Esther Hicks appeared in the original 2006 release of The Secret movie but did not continue with the project, and her segments were replaced in the extended edition, with contributors including Lisa Nichols and Marci Shimoff carrying the narration instead. The disagreement concerned contract terms for the project's wider distribution rather than the content of the teaching, and accounts of the details differ depending on which party is describing them. Hicks continued teaching the Abraham material independently, and it remains one of the closest adjacent bodies of work to Rhonda Byrne teachings.

In what order should you read Rhonda Byrne's books?

Start with The Secret (2006), because every later book assumes its vocabulary. The Magic (2012) is the most practical next step, since it is a structured 28 day gratitude program rather than an argument. The Power (2010) sits between them, recasting the law of attraction around love and feeling. The Greatest Secret (2020) is the outlier and reads very differently, turning toward awareness and identity rather than outcomes, and readers who came for manifestation often find it a strange fit.

Does Rhonda Byrne tell readers to avoid doctors and medicine?

The Secret book does not instruct readers to refuse medical care, and it includes material acknowledging conventional treatment. The criticism is subtler. The book presents illness as something thought contributes to and changed thought can reverse, and advises against dwelling on symptoms or negative reports. Critics argue this framing can discourage people from taking symptoms seriously and can leave sick people feeling responsible for their own illness. Anyone with a medical condition should treat the book as motivational writing and make treatment decisions with a clinician.

Is the law of attraction the same thing as manifesting?

They overlap but are not identical. The secret law of attraction is a specific claim: that like attracts like, and that the feeling tone of your thoughts draws matching circumstances toward you. Manifesting is a broader popular umbrella covering many methods, including Neville Goddard's imagination work, scripting, affirmations, and techniques circulated online that owe more to internet culture than to any named teacher. Rhonda Byrne's version is one lineage within that umbrella.