Hermeticism
What are the 7 Hermetic principles?
Real book, newer than it claims
The seven Hermetic principles are mentalism, correspondence, vibration, polarity, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender. They come from The Kybalion, a book published in Chicago in 1908 by “Three Initiates,” which presents them as the lost teaching of Hermes Trismegistus. They are not found as a set in the ancient Hermetic texts. A few have real Hermetic roots, one is an 18th-century idea, and several touch real science. Pick one below to see its exact words and test it.
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The Kybalion says
What the science says
Where they come from
Chicago, 1908
The principles are the Kybalion’s own. The book quotes them as sayings from an older book called “The Kybalion,” which is not known to exist outside this volume. The scholar Nicholas Chapel concludes that the sayings were most likely written at the same time as the commentary, in the early 20th century, and presented as ancient.
Some roots are real. “As above, so below” is a fair paraphrase of the Emerald Tablet, perhaps the only link “entirely specific to Hermetic philosophy itself,” in Chapel’s words. The idea that everything exists in a divine Mind matches the Corpus Hermeticum, where God is nous, Mind. And the first Hermetic treatise does describe God-the-Mind as “male and female both.”
Some are not. The principle of vibration goes back to the British doctor and philosopher David Hartley in the 18th century, not to Egypt. The practical side, using polarity to change your mood, comes from the New Thought movement of the book’s own time. Chapel counts at least four of the seven with Hermetic parallels, but calls the links “relatively superficial.”
Who wrote it. Almost certainly William Walker Atkinson, a Chicago New Thought writer who also wrote Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in 1906. The full case is on the Kybalion page.
Mental transmutation
Hate into love
The book’s promise. The Kybalion’s practical claim is that the mind can be changed like a metal in alchemy: “True Hermetic Transmutation is a Mental Art.” Its method is polarity. Hate and love are two ends of one scale, so “it is possible to change the vibrations of Hate to the vibrations of Love, in one’s own mind, and in the minds of others.” Its short rule: “To change your mood or mental state, change your vibration.”
What holds up. Take out the word vibration and part of this is ordinary: the book’s own summary is “Will directs the Attention, and Attention changes the Vibration.” Attention you direct on purpose is real, and neuroscience has mapped the brain networks that run it.
What does not. No measurement shows feelings as higher or lower frequencies, and nothing supports changing the feelings “in the minds of others” from a distance. The brain’s real rhythms are electrical waves measured in hertz, not a vibration that goes out into the world. For the manifestation side of the same idea, see is the law of attraction real?
Real vs legend
The seven principles, sorted
| Claim | Status |
|---|---|
| The seven principles are ancient Egyptian teaching. | Legend · The Kybalion, 1908 |
| “As above, so below” is Hermetic. | Real · Emerald Tablet |
| Everything moves, even at absolute zero. | Real · zero-point vibration |
| Everything has two poles. | Magnets yes · electric charge no |
| Every swing right equals a swing left. | Ideal pendulums only |
| Chance is only law not yet recognized. | Chaos agrees in part · still unpredictable |
| “Observing” with the mind changes reality. | Legend · detectors do it, not minds |
| Emotions are higher or lower vibrations. | No measurement shows it |
Questions
The 7 Hermetic principles
What are the 7 laws of Hermetics?
Mentalism, correspondence, vibration, polarity, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender, as listed in The Kybalion (1908). The first says “THE ALL IS MIND; The Universe is Mental.”
Where do the 7 Hermetic principles come from?
From The Kybalion, published in Chicago in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society and credited to “Three Initiates,” almost certainly William Walker Atkinson. The ancient Hermetic texts do not list them.
Do Hermetics believe in God?
Yes. In the ancient Hermetica God is one, beyond the world, and called Mind. The Kybalion calls the same thing “THE ALL” and says “THE ALL is MIND.”
Do Freemasons follow Hermetic principles?
There is no documented line from the Hermetica to Freemasonry. One early Masonic manuscript, from around 1450, names “Hermes, the philosopher” in a legend about two pillars, and a scholar who proposed ancient Hermetic “lodges” has been rejected for lack of evidence.
Are there 7 or 12 universal laws?
The seven come from The Kybalion. Lists of “12 universal laws” are not in The Kybalion or in the ancient Hermetic texts.
Is Hermeticism evil?
Christians have disagreed. Lactantius, an early Christian writer, praised Hermes as a witness to the Son of God, while Augustine condemned a Hermetic passage about bringing statues to life. The Kybalion itself is a self-improvement book from 1908.
Sources
Where this comes from
- Three Initiates, The Kybalion (text of the 1912 printing): Project Gutenberg. First edition 1908: archive.org.
- Nicholas E. Chapel, “The Kybalion’s New Clothes,” Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 24 (2013): jwmt.org.
- G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, 1906, Poemandres: sacred-texts.com.
- David M. Harrison, “The Feynman Double Slit,” University of Toronto: utoronto.ca.
- Guido Bacciagaluppi, “The Role of Decoherence in Quantum Mechanics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: plato.stanford.edu.
- Hackermüller and others, “Decoherence of matter waves by thermal emission of radiation,” Nature 427 (2004): doi.org.
- R. Nave, kinetic temperature and zero-point vibration, HyperPhysics: gsu.edu, gsu.edu.
- Arttu Rajantie, “Introduction to Magnetic Monopoles,” Contemporary Physics 53 (2012): arxiv.org.
- The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, circadian rhythm: nobelprize.org.
- Gyorgy Buzsáki and Andreas Draguhn, “Neuronal Oscillations in Cortical Networks,” Science 304 (2004): doi.org.
- Maurizio Corbetta and Gordon Shulman, “Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3 (2002): doi.org.
- The Matthew Cooke Manuscript, c. 1450: freemasonry.bcy.ca. Hermeticism and the “lodge” claim: Wikipedia.
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