I finished listening to the Kybalion as an audiobook and immediately went and bought a physical copy of the book. This is one I need to keep. Hermetics is a category of philosophy about life and the universe and is described in the Kybalion. I suppose one could call it religion, but that seems a step too far for the energy of this after reading the Kybalion.
The Kybalion is a book that describes the 7 hermetic principles – mentalism, correspondence, vibration, polarity, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender. Without diving too deeply into each principle, it essentially amounts to the fact that everything has vibration or energy, everything exists on a spectrum (polarity), and that cause and effect happens with everything. The mentalism piece of the puzzle is essentially that God is the all and thus goes on to describe the planes on which things happen – in this physical 3D world or outside of that in a more energetic, less tangible space.
I love the whole notion of this philosophy because it’s so simple and can be broadly applied depending on circumstances. It doesn’t contain perspective judgments explicitly, although I’m sure one could argue one way or another about many of the things. But mostly importantly to me, it just sits right.
The Kybalion is a reimagined version of the text titled Hermetica which was based on the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes Trismegistus is said to be a combination of Hermes the Greek god and Thoth the Egyptian god. I have not read Hermetica yet, but it’s on my to be read list. From what I gather from internet summaries, it seems like it delves more into esoteric principles and does have more prescriptive dogma that would be relevant to the time it was written.
What’s somewhat interesting to me is this parallel between Gnosticism and Hermeticism. While I have not gotten to the core of Gnosticism, it has generally resonated well to me. The intent behind Gnosticism is knowing for yourself – that’s how I prefer to do things. The more I read about comparatives of the two philosophies, it seems as though materialism is looked upon as a giant mistake by Gnosticism and something to be shed. That might be true, but that’s not helpful or constructive for existing in this 3D reality. I’m not about to change my 3D existence. I still want to know all the things, but the whole point of coming here is to experience life in a 3D physical form. I don’t want to live with a negative orientation towards life because it was a “mistake”.
I still don’t consider myself religious, but if I were to tend towards an identity in this space, I would say that Hermetics is it for now. I’m sure this will continue to evolve and there’s always so much more to learn, but I’ll just keep doing the best I can with what I’ve got for where I’m at.
What do you think of Hermetics? Let me know in the comments!
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