The Kybalion's Seven Hermetic Principles Explained

A 1908 text claimed to distill the core of Hermetic philosophy into seven laws—here's what each one actually says, and what we know about where they came from.

By AetherRitual Editorial — Reviewed by the Mystic Wiki community · Last updated January 2026

The Kybalion is one of those books that sits on every occultist's shelf, usually dog-eared and full of margin notes. Published in 1908 by William Walker Atkinson—a Chicago lawyer, publisher, and prolific New Thought author—the text presents seven principles it attributes to Hermes Trismegistus. I've spent years working through Hermetic literature, and the honest truth is this: the Kybalion is not an ancient document. It's an early 20th-century American synthesis of New Thought philosophy, garnished with Egyptian branding. But that doesn't mean it lacks substance. The seven principles are a genuinely useful mental model, whether or not they're ancient.

Who Actually Wrote the Kybalion?

Attributed to the pseudonym "Three Initiates," the Kybalion is almost universally credited to William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932), who published extensively under pseudonyms including Yogi Ramacharaka and Theron Q. Dumont. Atkinson was a central figure in the New Thought movement—a mind-power healing tradition overlapping with Christian Science and positive thinking.

The scholar Mitch Horowitz, in Occult America (2009), documents Atkinson's authorship in detail. The "Three Initiates" were likely Atkinson and possibly collaborators at his publishing house, the Yogi Publication Society in Chicago.

What Are the Seven Hermetic Principles?

Here's where it gets interesting. The Kybalion lays out seven "universal laws" that supposedly govern reality. Let's break each one down honestly—what the text says, and what we can independently say about it.

1. The Principle of Mentalism

"The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental."

This is the claim that everything originates from a universal consciousness. In Atkinson's framework, this aligns directly with New Thought's core teaching: mind is the root substance of reality. Whether you buy that as a metaphysical claim or not, it's worth noting that idealist philosophy—from George Berkeley to Bernardo Kastrup's 2018 The Idea of the World—has argued similar positions in academic settings. The Kybalion's version is less rigorous but more accessible.

2. The Principle of Correspondence

"As above, so below; as below, so above."

The most famous Hermetic phrase in the book—and possibly the most misused. The actual source for "as above, so below" is the Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina), a short Hermetic text probably composed in Arabic around the 8th or 9th century CE, later translated into Latin in the 12th century. The phrase suggests that the same patterns operate at every scale—macrocosm and microcosm mirror each other. Carl Jung used correspondence heavily in his theory of synchronicity (Jung, 1952).

3. The Principle of Vibration

"Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates."

This one feels prescient—modern physics describes matter as excitations of quantum fields, and string theory (if you accept it) models particles as vibrating strings. But Atkinson wasn't anticipating quantum mechanics. He was working from a much older esoteric premise that runs through Theosophy and earlier vitalist traditions. The overlap with physics is suggestive but not proof of connection.

4. The Principle of Polarity

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites."

Hot and cold are degrees of temperature, not opposites in kind. Love and hate, the Kybalion argues, are points on a spectrum. This is psychologically sound—we know from emotion research that opposing feelings can coexist and convert into each other. But the principle becomes weaker when stretched to cover moral or cosmic categories.

5. The Principle of Rhythm

"Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides."

Cycles. Pendulums. The principle claims that everything swings between poles in a rhythm. Economists recognize business cycles; psychologists know mood swings; historians point to civilizational rise and fall. The principle is descriptive rather than predictive—it tells you patterns exist without telling you their timing.

6. The Principle of Cause and Effect

"Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause."

This is straight determinism, familiar from classical physics. Modern quantum mechanics complicates it—radioactive decay, for instance, appears genuinely probabilistic at the individual event level. The Kybalion's version is absolute: nothing happens by chance. That's a philosophical position, not a settled scientific one.

7. The Principle of Gender

"Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles."

Here's where the Kybalion shows its age. Atkinson means "gender" in an alchemical sense—active/receptive, projective/receptive qualities—not biological sex. But the language hasn't aged well, and modern readers should understand the distinction. The underlying idea (creative processes involve complementary forces) is older than the Kybalion by centuries.

Is the Kybalion Actually Hermetic?

Here's the tension. Academic Hermeticism—the study of texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, primarily the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius—doesn't contain the seven principles. The Corpus Hermeticum was likely composed in Greek in Egypt between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Scholars like Brian Copenhaver (Hermetica, 1992) and Garth Fowden (The Egyptian Hermes, 1986) have mapped these texts extensively.

The Kybalion's principles are closer to New Thought and Theosophy than to anything in the Corpus Hermeticum. That doesn't make them worthless. But it does mean the book's framing as ancient Egyptian wisdom is marketing, not history.

Why the Kybalion Still Matters

Despite its dubious origins, the Kybalion has shaped modern Western esotericism more than almost any other single text. It influenced the New Age movement, chaos magic, and the "manifestation" industry. Its principles appear—often uncredited—in self-help literature, law of attraction teachings, and contemporary occult practice.

If you're going to read it, my advice is simple: treat it as a philosophical framework, not a historical artifact. The ideas are interesting on their own merits. The Egyptian backstory is window dressing.

"The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding." — The Kybalion (1908)

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Hermes Trismegistus write the Kybalion?

No. The Kybalion was published in 1908 by William Walker Atkinson under the pseudonym "Three Initiates." Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary figure—a Hellenistic fusion of the Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth—not a historical author of this text.

What does "as above so below" actually mean?

It expresses the Principle of Correspondence: patterns repeat across scales. The cosmos and the individual reflect each other. The phrase originates from the Emerald Tablet, not the Kybalion.

Is the Kybalion connected to ancient Egyptian religion?

Loosely at best. The book borrows Hermetic terminology and names Hermes Trismegistus as its source, but its actual philosophy is early 20th-century New Thought. The Corpus Hermeticum—the real Hermetic texts—was composed in Greco-Roman Egypt, not pharaonic Egypt.

Can the seven principles be tested scientifically?

Some principles echo concepts in physics (vibration, polarity), but they are metaphysical claims, not empirical hypotheses. They function as a philosophical framework rather than a scientific theory.