The Kybalion: Origins, Seven Principles and Hermetic Claims
The Kybalion explained: the 1908 book by the Three Initiates, its seven Hermetic principles, William Walker Atkinson, New Thought and its relation to Hermes.
The Kybalion is a short book published in Chicago in 1908 under the name "Three Initiates", which presents seven "Hermetic principles" as the core of an ancient Egyptian and Greek wisdom. It is now widely attributed to the American New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson, and historians read it as a work of early twentieth-century metaphysical religion rather than a translation of any ancient text. It remains one of the most widely read books on "Hermeticism" in the world, and the gap between its claims and the ancient Hermetica is the key to understanding it.
Publication and the "Three Initiates"§
The book's full title is The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece. It was issued in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society, whose address was the Masonic Temple building in Chicago. The title page names no individual author, only "Three Initiates", and the introduction presents the authors as humble transmitters of a secret teaching, offering it to students who are ready to receive it.
According to the book, "the Kybalion" is the name of a collection of Hermetic maxims, axioms and precepts handed down orally from master to pupil since the days of Hermes Trismegistus, whom it describes as a sage of earliest Egypt and the "Master of Masters". The authors quote these maxims in italics and then explain them. Some legends, they add, made Abraham a pupil of Hermes. Nothing in the book identifies a manuscript, a language or a place of transmission, and the maxims themselves read as English aphorisms written for the occasion.
The structure is simple. After an introduction on the Hermetic philosophy, chapter two sets out "The Seven Hermetic Principles", and the remaining chapters treat each principle in turn, with further chapters on "The All", "The Divine Paradox", "Mental Transmutation" and the "Hermetic Axioms".
William Walker Atkinson and New Thought§
William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) was a lawyer from Baltimore who, after a personal and professional breakdown in the 1880s and 1890s, turned to the healing and "mental science" ideas of the New Thought movement. Settling in Chicago at the end of the 1890s, he became an editor of New Thought periodicals and one of the most productive authors of the movement. He wrote under his own name and under many pen names, the best known being Yogi Ramacharaka, the "author" of a series of books on yoga, breathing and Indian philosophy issued by the same Yogi Publication Society. Other names attributed to him include Theron Q. Dumont and Magus Incognito.
The case for his authorship of The Kybalion rests on several kinds of evidence: the publisher and its address, which were Atkinson's; the style and vocabulary, which closely match his other writings; and the repetition of his favourite themes, such as mental vibration, polarisation of thought and the mastery of moods. In his 2011 edition the historian Philip Deslippe set out this evidence in detail, and most researchers now accept Atkinson as the principal author.
Who the other two "initiates" were, if they existed, is unknown. Names such as Paul Foster Case, later the founder of the Builders of the Adytum, and Atkinson's associate Michael Whitty have been proposed, but there is no firm evidence that either took part. The "three" may simply echo the Thrice-Great Hermes.
Atkinson's earlier book Thought Vibration, or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World (1906) already contained much of the Kybalion's outlook: the world is made of vibrations, thoughts are forces, and a trained mind can draw desired conditions to itself. The Kybalion gives that teaching a Hermetic genealogy.
The Seven Hermetic Principles§
The book's heart is a list of seven principles, each summed up in a short maxim.
Mentalism§
"The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental." The ultimate reality, called "The All", is infinite living mind, and the universe is a mental creation held within it. Matter is therefore not illusory but conditional, a lower rate of mental activity. This is the foundation of everything else in the book.
Correspondence§
"As above, so below; as below, so above." The book borrows the most famous phrase associated with the Emerald Tablet and treats it as a law of analogy between the physical, mental and spiritual planes. (For the history of the phrase, see As Above, So Below.)
Vibration§
"Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates." Differences between matter, energy, mind and spirit are explained as different rates of vibration, an idea that drew on popular accounts of electricity, light and the ether around 1900.
Polarity, Rhythm and Cause and Effect§
Polarity teaches that opposites are the same thing in different degrees, as heat and cold are degrees of temperature; Rhythm, that everything swings like a pendulum between poles; Cause and Effect, that nothing happens by chance and that "chance" is only an unrecognised law.
Gender§
The seventh principle holds that "gender" (masculine and feminine principles, explicitly distinguished from physical sex) is present on every plane, and that mental creation results from their interplay. Here the book draws on nineteenth-century occult and Theosophical speculation rather than any Hermetic source.
Mental Transmutation and the Practical Teaching§
What made the book attractive to readers was its practical promise. The Kybalion defines Hermeticism above all as "mental transmutation": the art of changing mental states, and through them conditions, by applying the principles. If everything is mental, then the transmutation of metals described by the alchemists was really a parable for the transmutation of moods, thoughts and circumstances.
Two techniques receive special attention. "Polarisation" means deliberately moving one's attention from an undesired pole (fear, for example) to its opposite (courage) along the same scale. "Neutralisation" of rhythm means learning to rise above the pendulum swing of moods so that the backward swing is not felt. These are psychological disciplines of self-mastery, very close to the "mental science" taught in New Thought classes, and the book frames them in the language of masters, initiates and the Hermetic art.
The book also warns against concluding that the universe is unreal: its "Divine Paradox" holds that the world is a mental creation and yet, relative to us, entirely real, so the laws of the material plane must be respected.
Is the Kybalion Ancient? Comparing It with the Hermetica§
The ancient Hermetic writings survive in Greek, Latin, Coptic and Arabic: the treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Latin Asclepius, the Coptic texts from Nag Hammadi, the Stobaean excerpts and the technical works on astrology, alchemy and magic. None of them contains the seven principles in the form the Kybalion gives, and none uses the word "Kybalion".
There are real points of contact. Treatise XI of the Corpus Hermeticum teaches that the cosmos is in God and that God is like a mind that contains all things; the Poimandres describes divine Mind as the source of all; and the Emerald Tablet speaks of the unity of above and below. A reader can see why Atkinson presented his synthesis as Hermetic. But the specific vocabulary of vibration rates, polarisation, the pendulum of rhythm and mental "gender", and the goal of mastering moods for success, belong to the world of New Thought, Theosophy and popular science around 1900. The ancient Hermetica are religious texts concerned with the knowledge of God, rebirth and the ascent of the soul (see Poimandres); the Kybalion is a manual of mental self-cultivation.
Historians of esotericism therefore classify the Kybalion as an example of "invented tradition": a modern teaching that claims an ancient lineage to give itself authority. It may still be read with profit, but not as a source for what ancient Hermetists believed. For that reader, the introduction What Is Hermeticism? is the better starting point.
Influence and Reception§
The Kybalion sold steadily from 1908 onwards and has never been out of print. Because it entered the public domain in the United States, numerous editions, commentaries and courses have appeared, and the "seven Hermetic principles" are now repeated in occult manuals, self-help books and websites as if they were the original teaching of Hermes Trismegistus.
Its influence on the Law of Attraction literature is clear: the idea that thoughts are vibrations that attract their likes, and that mental states shape circumstances, runs from Atkinson through later New Thought writers to popular works of the twenty-first century. In esoteric circles, some teachers of Hermetic Qabalah and tarot adopted its language, and the book was read in Rosicrucian and Theosophical study groups.
Scholarly attention came late. Historians of American metaphysical religion, such as Catherine Albanese and Mitch Horowitz, place it within the New Thought milieu of Chicago, while Philip Deslippe's research established the publishing history. Students of Hermeticism usually mention it as the best-known modern example of how the prestige of Hermes continued after Isaac Casaubon had shown in 1614 that the Greek Hermetica were not of remote antiquity.
Frequently asked questions§
Who wrote the Kybalion?§
The book was published anonymously as the work of "Three Initiates". Most researchers attribute it to William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932), the New Thought author who also wrote as Yogi Ramacharaka and whose Yogi Publication Society issued it. The identity of any co-authors is unknown.
Is the Kybalion an ancient Hermetic text?§
No. No ancient manuscript of a "Kybalion" is known, and its seven principles do not appear in the Greek, Latin, Coptic or Arabic Hermetica. It is a modern book from 1908 that draws on New Thought, Theosophy and popular science while claiming Hermetic descent.
What are the seven Hermetic principles?§
According to the Kybalion they are Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender. Only Correspondence ("as above, so below") has a clear older Hermetic source, in the Latin tradition of the Emerald Tablet.
Is the Kybalion worth reading?§
It is worth reading as a key document of modern esotericism and of American New Thought, and many readers find its psychological advice useful. It should not be read as evidence of what ancient Hermetists taught; for that, the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius are the primary sources.
Sources and further reading§
- The Kybalion — Three Initiates, 1908
- The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition — William Walker Atkinson, 2011
- Thought Vibration, or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World — William Walker Atkinson, 1906
- Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation — Mitch Horowitz, 2009
- A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion — Catherine L. Albanese, 2007
- Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius — Brian P. Copenhaver, 1992
- The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times — Florian Ebeling, 2007