Book Review: The Kybalion

This is a book that was on my to-read list, but I have no idea where I heard about it or why I put it on that list, but it was a pretty interesting read. It was first published in Chicago in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society under the mysterious author name “Three Initiates.”

I always thought hermetically sealed’s root word was from hermit, but turns out it’s from Hermes Trismegistus and his hermetic teachings. I guess you could classify the subject matter as occult and philosophy. One of the main tenants that is teaches is that the Universe, or The All as it says, at it’s most fundamental level is consciousness. This is something actually becoming more and more talked about in modern philosophy. Matter comes from consciousness not the other way around as a lot of people have believed. Of course neither of these ideas are proven.

This leads to the seven principles:

1. Mentalism: “The All is Mind.” Reality is fundamentally mental or consciousness-like.

2. Correspondence: different levels of reality reflect one another; this is where the famous idea “as above, so below” enters the discussion.

3. Vibration: everything is in motion; differences between matter, energy, mind, etc. are differences in vibration.

4. Polarity: opposites are really extremes of the same underlying thing: hot/cold, light/dark, love/hate.

5. Rhythm: phenomena move back and forth in cycles, like a pendulum.

6. Cause and Effect: nothing happens purely by chance; every event participates in chains of causation.

7. Gender: a masculine/feminine creative polarity supposedly operates throughout nature and mind.

It was interesting reading about these, but they really didn’t get too deep into any of them. The chapters were just a very basic introduction to the concept, which provide just a little more insight into the concepts that I’ve already provided above. Throughout the book, it refers to how people with deep knowledge of these concepts were on a kind of advanced plane of existence, but it didn’t provide any of the knowledge it claimed that could be achieved.

Just as I’m giving you some of the ideas from this book, this book is just giving you ideas from the ancient writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus which are available today, and I think those might be the more interesting reads. Apprently Brian P. Copenhaver’s Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius contains the actual ancient texts.

Overall I would say the main thing this book did was make me aware the Hermes even existed, and give me an intereting rabit hole to go down in the future. It’s not a bad read and if you really wanted you could finish it in a weekend easily.