3. 3. Everything is and isnt at the same time. The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece "The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding" The Kybalion is a book published by someone (s) under the pseudonym "the Three Initiates." It's based on the teachings of a revered sage of the past - Hermes Trismegistus. 3. Hermetic philosophy, or Hermeticism, is based around the teachings of legendary super-mystic Hermes Trismegistus. These are each further subdivided by 7 sub-planes. [26], The relationship between Judaism and Hermetism has been one of mutual influence and a subject of controversy within the Jewish religion. By dominating our moods, characters, qualities, and powers, we become masters of ourselves. The Kybalion is the name given to one of the early oral traditions of Hermetics. He sees ties to Hermeticism in Mormon support for Pelagianism, communitarianism, polygamy and Dispensationalism. [21] Hermetism is generally optimistic about God, while many forms of Christian Gnosticism are pessimistic about the creator: several Christian Gnostic sects saw the cosmos as the product of an evil creator, and thus as being evil itself, while Hermetists saw the cosmos as a beautiful creation in the image of God. This culminated in a wide use of Hermetic texts for the use of theurgy and talisman construction. In the passage quoted above it does day, Like is understood by Like. In this way, physical disease could be cured, mental and emotional illnesses re-balanced, happiness, wealth, love and spiritual attainment could all be realized. It was published in the early 20th century and preaches a philosophy closer to that of the New Thought movement. This principle enables the transition from one pole to the other. There are valid reasons for Atkinson to evolve Hermetic perspectives, to keep up with the rest of human evolution. The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition: William Walker Atkinson, Three Initiates, edited by Philip Deslippe contains an excellent history and commentary, as well as additional writings by Atkinson. Mentalism. The Kybalion: Hermetic Philosophy is a book anonymously published in 1912 by three people who called themselves the "Three Initiates", and claims to expound upon essential Hermetic principles. [11] Atkinson, William Walker. This is within your control. [4] These are, as literally quoted from the book: "The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental. Chapter 1: Hermetic Philosophy. Let me know if there are any questions I can help with! Of the 22 instances in which traits and abilities are ascribed to the Mastersevery one of them pertains to the ability to control their mental world: to dominating their moods, transmuting and mastering their mental states, attaining emotional stability, and developing powers to control the world around them [6]. The Kybalion. Of course, its not a real book of hermetic writings, but really, what is? Astrological Talismans (Planetary Magic V), legendary super-mystic Hermes Trismegistus, check out my list of getting started books, Arnemancy : The Nature of God in the Kybalion and the Hermetica, https://arnemancy.com/articles/hermeticism/the-nature-of-god-in-the-kybalion-and-the-hermetica/, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592577350/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_qDAKCbXFHH8MX, Notes on Corpus Hermeticum I: Poimandres | Hermetic Wanderings, https://arnemancy.com/articles/hermeticism/what-to-read-instead-of-the-kybalion/, A Verdadeira Histria do Caibalion - Com Nicholas Chapel (Hermeticulture) - Projeto Mayhem. 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. The Kybalion.[18]. He was a lawyer, a renowned occultist, and publisher through his Yogi Publication Society in Chicago. In regards to this Law of Attraction, Nicholas Chapel goes on to say: But the mind spoken of in The Kybalion is not the Mind of the Hermetica. Definitely Hermeticism influenced the Kybalion, but that doesnt mean that the Kybalion agrees entirely with Hermeticism. As always, I recommend to all student of magickal craft to read the original sources for yourself. I was looking for recommendations on where to start and asked a friend (Matt) and he pointed me to Rather they probably made use of such things as magical rituals, divination, and invocations of the gods, just as we see in most ancient religions. The Kybalion. The Kybalion also speaks of the principle of correspondence. The 7 Hermetic Principles are a set of ancient tenets, passed down through the generations. However, it was clearly a product of the New Thought movements philosophies. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the business of the Greek Trickster God Hermes, himself, and he likes it this way! In this context, faith refers both to the believers' act of trust and to the content of their faith. The first text of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Poimandres (whose name is probably a Greek adaptation of the Egyptian p-eime-n-re or mind of authority), tells us that the source of the universe was nous consciousness or mind much as The Kybalion asserts the principle of Mentalism. Moreover, this divine mind is described as being androgyne and existing as light and life which parallels the concept of Gender as set out in The Kybalion. Schreiberhauer Strae 30. The modern science of physics informs us that matter and energy are the same, just vibrating at different frequencies. The challenge, however, is worth it. Your thoughts are seeds, plant positive scenes in your mind garden. It is a mystical primer for New Thought, which ushered in a huge segment of esoteric thinking, especially in America. Walter Scott, Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings Which Contain Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Boston: Shambhala, 1985 [1924]. Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates., 4. The Way of Hermes by Clement Salaman et al, is a recent translation of the Corpus Hermeticum. But, what is Hermeticism? Depending on your point of view, The Kybalion, which is fabled to have been authored by the three anonymous initiates, is either a bunch of pseudo-scientific, half baked nonsense or it is an essential truth that has survived the ages which is only now being validated by recent breakthroughs in science, like the fourth state of water or the observation effect in quantum physics. If I've learned anything from Aphrodite, it's this: you are already a Tucker Carlson Fired Are the Adults in As popular as Tucker Carlson was, he became more trouble than he Black-African centered teaching groups and Black Nationalist movements, who gave proper credit to the African origins of the Egyptian God Thoth, also known as Tehuti. [25] In the same period some Muslims started to identify the Qur'anic prophet Idrs (the Islamic equivalent to the Biblical Enoch) with Hermes. CHAPTER I. On the Mental Plane, there are sub-planes for the mineral mind, plant mind, and animal mind, among the planes for the elemental minds and human mind. Understanding leads to wisdom. The is like manifestation 101, which is all about using your thoughts to shape your reality. Not sure if it all has anything remotely to do with Hermeticism, but it was fun to read! The great Fourth Hermetic Principlethe Principle of Polarity embodies the truth that all manifested things have "two sides"; "two aspects"; "two poles"; a "pair of opposites," with manifold degrees between the two extremes. In this context, Hermes came to be seen as a 'prophet of science'. These principles should be very familiar to readers of the Kybalion, where they are presented as mental transmutation. In fact, if you look at the principles espoused by the Kybalion in the context of New Thought philosophy, it is clear that many of its ideas originated there.1. The Kybalion is purported to reflect the writings of Hermes Trismegistus the personage of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth from the time of the Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, who was associated with wisdom, learning, and literature. Vibration. The Kybalion Def. Renaissance scholars argued that the rationalism of Maimonides drew upon the prisca sapienta that had both Mosaic and Hermetic origins and that Abraham ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch was evidence that they shared the same views on the relationship between religion and science. Atkinson published as many as 100 books during the last 30 years of his life, under his own name. The Kybalion gave practical tools on how to living here on Earth successfully while on that journey toward enlightenment. [28] Three Initiates, The Kybalion, Clayton, Ga.: Tri-State Press, 1988 [1908]. Even there, they are held in unique balance of polarity which is a range of possibility. More posts from the EsotericOccult community 16 Posted by 2 days ago Eight of Cups Conjunction Tarot 1 comment 16 Posted by 3 days ago Thoughts on djinn? The Kybalion Definitive Edition, Page 92, [3] http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php?chapter=II, [4] http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php?chapter=II, [5] http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php?chapter=II, [6] http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php?chapter=II, [8] http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php?chapter=II. by deliberately fixing ones intention upon a more desirable state. [31] Lelli suggests that it was natural for these Jewish Kabbalists to elevate Hermetic teachings to a major role in Jewish thought in a time when they began to produce their own "antirationalist--exegesis of scripture." Fabrizo Lelli writes: "As for Christians and Muslims, so likewise for Jews, Hermetism was an alternative to Aristotelianism--the likeliest prospect, in fact, for integrating an alien system into their religion. There are also good resources on Hermeticism on YouTube, but they can be tough to find. However, what appears as dualism is but unity in disguise. It is from the New Thought movements interpretation of the classic Hermetic teachings on Mental Transmutation, that we get The Law of Attraction as made enormously popular within the New Age scene that emerged in the last few decades, and was made popular through the books and movie called The Secret.[3], The Law of Attraction is based on the Hermetic notion that the Universe is made of thoughts, and that by properly envisioning a desired outcome, focusing our thoughts in alignment with that outcome, like will attract like. Im glad you found something. The Corpus Hermeticum did not exist in a philosophical vacuum; its elevated and abstruse dialogues form only a part of the ancient Hermetic literature. Gender (i.e. not just physical sex but its generative function to beget, to procreate, to generate, to create, or to produce is manifested in everything. In particular, they believed the Hermetic teachings to have its origins in ancient Jewish sources. Free delivery for many products! I am a part of the Divine, I and the Father are one. [28] Medieval Hermetism, aside from alchemy, is often seen as analogous to and was heavily influenced by these Kabbalistic ideas. For example, fear can be transmuted to love, just as heat can be transmuted to cold, but they shift along a single pole. "The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental." The Kybalion. The old paradoxes, which have ever perplexed the mind of men, are explained by an understanding of this . The laws and principles are essentially repeated yet structured quite differently. Our conversation truly did help restore my faith in the decency ", "Thank you for coming on the podcast, and for your kind words. You can work to transmute any quality along that polarity. The same goes for The Kybalion. and that it is the Cosmos itself (a World-Brain as it says) which is the one living Mind this revelation is more in accordance with parts of the Corpus Hermeticum (despite the back/forth idea of the absolute God being Mind or not; the CH does, indeed, contain contradictions!). Ha! The use of mind power as we find it in New Thought seems to be very much an innovation of the nineteenth century. Hermetism was also prominent in the works of David Messer Leon, Isaac Abravanel, Judah Abravanel, Elijah Hayyim, Abraham Farissol, Judah Moscato and Abraham Yagel. Understanding leads to wisdom. As the first principle Mentalism suggests, the ideas of The Kybalion bear some resemblance to New Thought, a movement to which Atkinson was closely connected. "[10], "Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes. People who have spent time grazing in metaphysical bookshops may have come across a mysterious volume called The Kybalion, written by Three Initiates and first issued by the Yogi Publication Society of Chicago in 1908. It is a popularized form of self-help psychology, relying on principles such as mind-over-matter and the law of attraction. This idea appears in another ancient Hermetic text: the extremely brief and elliptical Emerald Tablet, which says, Quod est superius est sicut quod est inferius, et quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius: What is above is like what is below, and what is below is like what is above, to enact the wonders of the one thing. (The Emerald Tablet is said to have originally been written in Syriac, a Semitic language spoken in antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean world, but it survives only in somewhat dissimilar translations in Latin and Arabic.). Note that wisdom is the higher octave of learning, meaning . This knowledge of God comes upon a mystical experience dependent upon rebirth, the focal point of arguments for influence from one of these religions upon the other. Despite that shift of emphases, it was clear throughout the Hermetic texts that mental transmutation was the goal of a practice based in Hermetic philosophy. There are Physical, Mental, and Spiritual planes in which all things exist. I also drill down into the very different concepts of divinity in the Kybalion and the CH in this article: https://arnemancy.com/articles/hermeticism/the-nature-of-god-in-the-kybalion-and-the-hermetica/. Mary K. Greer, Sources of The Kybalion in Anna Kingsfords Hermetic System, marygreer.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/source-of-the-kybalion-in-anna-kingsford%E2%80%99s-hermetic-system (Accessed Nov. 11, 2010). Accessed February 24, 2016. http://www.jwmt.org/v3n24/chapel.html. Instead, it is easier to start with The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. [] https://arnemancy.com/articles/hermeticism/what-to-read-instead-of-the-kybalion/ [], [] Arnemancy What to Read Instead of The Kybalion: https://arnemancy.com/articles/hermeticism/what-to-read-instead-of-the-kybalion/ []. of all the writings, it seems alot about hermetic phylosphy, and related thinking. From old Egypt have come the fundamental esoteric and occult teachings which have so strongly influenced the philosophies of all races . Whether there really was a collection of aphorisms known as The Kybalion that was passed down from master to pupil from ancient times is hard to say. The early Mormons, most notably Joseph Smith, were linked by Brooke with magic, alchemy, Freemasonry, divining and "other elements of radical religion" prior to Mormonism. Hermetism as we know it from the CH is a synthesis of many late-antiquity schools of thought ascribed to Hermes. In 1884, Anna Kingsford, an Englishwoman who founded an organisation called the Hermetic Society, published a book entitled The Virgin of the World of Hermes Trismegistus, which presents an adaptation of the Hermetic texts. Thanks! Nicholas Chapel, who wrote an article called The Kybalions New Clothes, for the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition in 2013, drew this conclusion: Hermeticism has long appropriated ideas and even entire systems which have not originated from within its own milieu. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean (not to be confused with the extremely short and rather uninspiring/disappointing Emerald Tablet of Hermes) was a quite interesting read; very poetic/rhythmic, which mainly tells the tale of what supposedly happened in Atlantis and afterwards when he settled in Egypt. 20142023 Arnemancy. As above, so below; as below so above. The Kybalion.[15]. [5] Opposed to the basis of the contemporary mystery cults, both texts relayed that the core of religious practice should be done internally through the personal experience of the believer rather than externally through sacramental ritual. Change is inevitable, struggle is an option. Nothing rests, and everything moves and vibrates. There is hot and cold, light and dark, good and evil etc. Nicholas E. Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition No. 16-17), introducing citations to additional sources, "The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844", "Hermes Among the Jews: Hermetica as Hebraica from Antiquity to the Renaissance", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hermetism_and_other_religions&oldid=1118199088, Wikipedia introduction cleanup from May 2014, Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from May 2014, All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify, Articles needing additional references from March 2022, All articles needing additional references, Articles with dead external links from February 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Van den Broek, Roelof. This influence led to the 1908 publication of The Kybalion by Three Initiates. The New Thought movement is totally Hermetic if you really think about it, minus all the allegories, false blinds, etc. 3. [27], Despite Maimonides' denunciation of Hermetism, Jewish scholars in the Renaissance struggled to reconcile his beliefs with those of the proponents of Hermetic thought within Judaism. You'll find a selection of useful book summaries and infographics to help you become your best self, covering topics including positive psychology, self-improvement, productivity, entrepreneurship and spirituality. [6], "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates. Nicholas E. Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition No. 24, Vol. The Kybalion is purported to reflect the writings of Hermes Trismegistus - the personage of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth from the time of the Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, who was associated with wisdom, learning, and literature. As I noted in the accompanying article, The Secret Science of Mind, it is believed to have been written by William Walker Atkinson, who operated the Yogi Publication Society in Chicago (he is generally acknowledged to be Swami Ramacharaka). 24, Vol. The core of the work is a series of aphorisms that, the authors contend, go back to the early days and were passed on from teacher to student,the exact signification and meaning of the terms having been lost for several centuries.. It didnt just end with the Corpus Hermeticum. Together, these seven principles constitute an explanation of the basic laws that apply to all of creation. Posted February 24, 2016 by Reverend Erik. THE HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY "The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding"--The Kybalion. Physical, Mental, and Spiritual are not separated but instead flow in the same line with different degrees of existence. Note that wisdom is the higher octave of learning, meaning . 24 (March 2013). There are 7 celestial spheres, governed by the 7 classical planets, which mirror interconnected patterns like octaves repeating infinitely through the three great planes. It is now irrefutably understood to have been authored alone by William Walker Atkinson (18621932). In the Corpus Hermeticum, there is a great deal of emphasis on denying their bodies, so that upon death they could escape the bonds of destiny, and transcend beyond the cycles of reincarnation, to re-merge with the Divine Mind (Nous), singing hymns of praises among the outer stars for eternity. He also published under several pseudonyms, such as Yogi Ramacharaka, Magus Incognito, Theron Q. Dumont, and Three Initiates. Learn how your comment data is processed. The work is attributed to the Three Initiates. Mental Plane = Underworld and Astral [9] Each of the two texts stress the importance of redemption, revelation, and rebirth to find knowledge of God[4] and contain striking similarity in the wording of how moral attitudes promote higher knowledge in general. While I prefer to think that there is such a thing as objective reality, the Kybalion poses that all truths are but half-truths and every truth is half false; there are two sides to everything, opposites are identical in nature but are different in degree, extremes meet, and all paradoxes may be reconciled. Hi Randy! Do the best you can under the circumstances arising each day. The Russian esotericist Boris Mouravieff claimed that esoteric Christianity has an unpublished set of aphorisms called The Golden Book, some of which he quotes in his three-volume work Gnosis: Study and Commentaries on the Esoteric Tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy (although these do not resemble the maxims of The Kybalion to any great degree). An Early 20thCentury Texts Dubious Association with Hermeticism Vernal Equinox 2013, [20] http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php?chapter=II, [21] Atkinson, William Walker. Visit his blog at www.innerchristianity.com/blog.htm.