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The Kybalion

Text
Definition

The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, published anonymously in 1908 by Three Initiates (widely attributed to William Walker Atkinson). The book digests the Hermetic tradition into seven memorable principles and is the most influential English-language presentation of esoteric Hermeticism in the twentieth century — quoted, paraphrased and built upon by every subsequent New Thought writer worth reading.

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The seven principles, in order

*Mentalismthe All is mind; the universe is mental. Correspondenceas above, so below; as below, so above. Vibrationnothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates. Polarityeverything is dual; everything has poles; opposites are identical in nature, different in degree. Rhythmeverything flows, out and in; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything. Cause and effectevery cause has its effect; every effect has its cause. Gendergender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles*.

Authorship

The book was published by the Yogi Publication Society of Chicago, which is also the publisher under which William Walker Atkinson released his many other New Thought titles under various pseudonyms. The internal evidence — vocabulary, framing, the book's strong New Thought tilt — strongly supports Atkinson as at least one of the three initiates, and most modern scholarship treats him as effectively the sole author.

Honest critique

The Kybalion is not a faithful presentation of the actual Corpus Hermeticum. It is a digestion of the tradition through the New Thought lens of its early-twentieth-century moment. Read it for what it is — a masterpiece of esoteric distillation — rather than for what it sometimes claims to be. As an entry to thinking in correspondences and a working primer for manifestation practice, it remains unmatched.

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