The seven principles
Most modern exposure to Hermeticism comes through the *Kybalion*, the 1908 Three Initiates digest of the tradition into seven principles: mentalism (the All is mind), correspondence (as above, so below), vibration (everything is in motion), polarity (everything has its pair), rhythm (everything flows out and in), cause and effect, and gender. The principles do not exhaust the tradition, but they are the cleanest entry point in English.
What it actually claims
Hermeticism is not, in its serious form, a system of magic spells. It is a metaphysical position about the structure of reality — that mind is primary, matter derivative, and that disciplined attention to the correspondences between the small and the large is the practical means of philosophical and ethical work. The Renaissance mages — Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno, John Dee — read it that way; so did Isaac Newton, who wrote more on alchemy and Hermetic philosophy than on the physics for which he became famous.
Why it matters here
Hermeticism is the bridge between Gnosticism, Kabbalah, alchemy and the modern New Thought movement that produced Wallace Wattles, Neville Goddard and Joseph Murphy. Its mentalism principle is the philosophical seed from which the entire Law of Attraction literature is grown.
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