I read this book because of the article I found on Hermes Trismegistus a character who shows up in the weirdest places. The alleged inspiration behind the Egyptian god Thoth and the later Greek god Hermes, Hermetic philosophy appears to be incredibly influential in world religion yet something I had never really heard of. This is where we get the phrase “Hermetically sealed” from as the process was used in alchemy in attempts to make the philosopher’s stone. Enter the Kybalion, a fairly popular book written by the three initiates which puts the hermetic philosophy into a nice, condensed package.

Summary(Ripped from Wiki)

The book covers the 7 main tennents of the Hermetic philosophy. 1. The principle of mentalism — “The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.” 2. The principle of correspondence — “As above, so below; as below, so above. This principle embodies the truth that there is always a correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of being and life. 3. The principle of vibration — “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.” 4. The principle of polarity — “Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.” 5. The principle of rhythm — “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” 6. The principle of cause and effect — “Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to law; chance is but a name for law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law.” 7. The principle of gender — “Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes.” Thoughts

Due to its mysterious name and mystical aura I expected the content to be a little more crazy than it was. It struck me as another version of those things that draws from many different religions and traditions to create something new. The claims of the book were of course that it was the Hermetic philosophy that inspired the earliest religions (for example one Jewish tradition says that Hermes was Abraham’s teacher for a time). This is an interesting claim, but in digging further there appears to be no basis for this for several reasons.

  1. This book was published in 1908, and although the author is unconfirmed many suspect it to be a guy named William Walker Atikinson(WWA).
  2. It turns out this book has a tenuous connection with actual Hermetic philosophy. It looks like only 4 of the 7 principles can be firmly rooted in the older Hermetic philosophy. Specifically, concepts of vibration (which was heavily hammered on as a “Hermes called this thousands of years ago and science is just now confirming this”) turns out to be a very popular new idea that WWA’s group propounded.
  3. The old hermetic writings aren’t really that old. Think ~300AD That being said I found many of these principles to be interesting and actually somewhat helpful ways of looking at the world. I feel like they are similar to principles my brother would create if he moved to India for a year came back and worked at a BP for five years, and then wrapped up his time running a Zamboni over a public ice ring until he retired. Joking aside, it did seem like a much more coherent system of belief than most people have although this book was an introduction so i think the crazy would come in the deeper you got into the system. Another claim this book makes was that Alchemy was originally about transmuting negative thoughts into positive ones, not just about lead into gold. It’s a shame we have the internet because without it, this book could have become a sacred text.